


Cobalt

by Saphistar



Series: War of Hearts [1]
Category: Mass Effect Trilogy
Genre: Angst, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Captivity, Death, F/M, First Contact War, Fluff and Humor, Gore, Humans, Humour, Love Story, Mass Effect - Freeform, Mass Effect Trilogy - Freeform, Original Character(s), Physical Torture, Romance, Sex, Strong Language, Tale as Old as Time, The Relay 314 Incident, Torture, Turians, Violence, burn as slow as fuck, cross species, cross species relations, ghost - Freeform, human colony, original female human character - Freeform, original male turian character, original male turian character/original female human character, shanxi, turian ghost, turian/human liason
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-09-20
Updated: 2018-07-15
Packaged: 2019-01-01 01:56:41
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 10
Words: 120,198
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12146148
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Saphistar/pseuds/Saphistar
Summary: Shanxi was far from a lost cause.With the turian fleet in decline it was time to take the colony back and reclaim humanity’s dignity from their blood stained talons.But were the alien invaders as monstrous as they seemed? Were humans any better? With a chance encounter with a turian ground fleet commander infamously known to the Alliance as the Ghost, Sophie Knighton wasn’t so sure but was the charge of treason really worth the risk to find out?





	1. The Ghost of Shanxi

**Author's Note:**

> Discretion advised; Death, graphic violence, gore, torture, strong language and sex will be present in this story. You have been warned. Also it would help if you’re familiar with the comic series as a lot of this story is based roughly around those.

“It’s weird, huh?” Richard’s voice was muffled behind a mouthful of the cake Sophie had offered him while she merely nodded in agreement.

Cake was one of Sophie Knighton’s favourite foods and she often baked and brought samples of her wares to the lab if supplies would allow. Of course, this attracted the attention of others with sweet teeth. Richard, big bulky Richard with his thick arms, hairy chin and mean expression was a regular visitor. Though Sophie was quite sure he came for a little more than just her cake and the company was always welcome given just how solitary her work could be.

The memo he’d delivered to her just now was indeed weird, the captain of the operation being run here at Mt. Myka hadn’t been his top priority, that was for certain. The man was no scientist, but a soldier and – as far as the entirety of project Pegasus was concerned – he was stationed at the Driftwood barracks a good seventy kilometres away. Surely his ground fleets were more important to him than a few little scientists buried in the wilderness?

Sophie turned the datapad over in her hands as though the action itself would yield an answer to Richard’s question. It was strange and that feeling sat heavy in her gut like a brick. Something wasn't right, hadn't been for a while and she could feel it stirring in her waters.

Mt. Myka wasn’t even a real mountain. Hell, it wasn’t a mountain at all but an expanse of land nestled in the deep thicket of forest just on the outskirts of Shanxi’s second largest colonial site. If one could even call it a colony anymore; ghost town was a much more accurate description now the humans had long abandoned it. In the throes of the battle against the turians “pop-up” operations were not uncommon; temporary complexes to gather resources or regroup before being packed away and moved along to the next location. This was the best form of action to avoid the bird's wrath as soon as they got wise to a facilities location.

Mt. Myka was indeed one of these pop-up facilities though the building had stood here for the best part of a year or more. She was certain, however that it was almost time to move. Most – if not all - the turians in this area had long left and supplies were beginning to dwindle so it was becoming less profitable to hang around. Driftwood Barracks would be the next stop.

Sophie Knighton had led a life of this obscure solitude for the best part of a month and so far the life suited her, in fact leaving Earth was just about the best thing she could have done after the separation. Her split from what she had once thought was the love of her life had been a messy one. He’d wanted her to leave the Alliance in favour of raising children in the suburbs, where as she had wanted to pursue her career. The arguments and the resentment had gotten too much but rather than face her demon living in what should have been a happy family home, she simply up sticks and left for Shanxi the moment she found out they were recruiting for the war effort against the turians.  
  
It was not one of her smartest moves and the divorce had been difficult as a result, but her work was everything.

No man would take that from her.  
  
The first contact war was indeed drawing to a close, or so it seemed. The Turian Hierarchy was a mess, the turians occupying Shanxi themselves were slowly starving on a planet with little to no food compatible with their delicate digestive systems and yet, still, stubborn generals were attempting to hold the colony from human hands. Talk about cutting off one’s nose to spite their face. Their men were dying and still they fought for a cause that was long since lost to them. Sophie sometimes admired the bird's for their sense of honour and sacrifice in the face of hardship though it was beginning to dawn on her that they were playing a losing game out of nothing other than petulant spite.  
  
The whole fiasco had begun as some misunderstanding about humans attempting to awaken a dormant mass relay nearby to Shanxi, but for whatever reason the fighting had drawn on and now it had turned into one enormous horrible power battle between the humans and the turians.  
  
It seemed that neither species really liked each other very much.  
  
Not that this was really any of Sophie’s concern. Her role on Shanxi was quite simple; to gather intelligence on the species so hellbent on getting them away from the colony.  
  
Turians were… interesting, for want of a better term. It had been a popular myth since first contact that the creatures were venomous. That their bodily fluids was a toxin that could kill a man six times over, though this had since been proven wrong. Turian fluids were indeed toxic to a human, it didn’t make the species venomous so to speak. Dextro-amino acids were not uncommon in the world of man, but of course man didn’t count on running into an alien race that survived purely on a dextro-amino diet.  
  
It went without saying that the humans took full advantage of this chink to the invader's otherwise impregnable armour.  
  
All the turians that Sophie dealt with were dead, killed in battle or emaciated through lack of nourishment. The latter were the worst to work with given the fact that there was so very little left of the corpses to work with at all. Most of the muscle was usually withered or stringy and the flesh beneath the hard shell of the carapace went paper-thin due to lack of nutrition and fluid.   
  
It was during the dissection of one of these starved bodies when she’d received the memo, a simple invite to the auditorium no later than noon that day. The lack of detail was, indeed, rather concerning.  
  
A quick glance at the clock above her office door confirmed it was little before nine thirty.  
  
“What d’ya reckon he wants?” Richard asked bluntly but not impolitely. Richard was an acquired taste as far as people were concerned, he was a little brash and a little loud and the folks here at Mt. Myka had had a little trouble adjusting to the head of security’s bold personality. For a time, Sophie had been the only real friend he’d had being as she was the only one who had very quickly gotten past Richard’s sheer volume. He was nice enough to talk to and she enjoyed hearing him talk about his family back on Earth - a girlfriend, Jenny, was it? And a young daughter - and Sophie certainly didn’t mind having him around as he didn’t seem to mind hanging around either.  
  
“I’m not sure…” she responded eventually, her voice a little softer than she’d originally intended and even she had noted the odd tremor of concern quivering in her throat. “It’s all very… ominous, huh?”  
  
Richard, a hulking boy of twenty-six, simply shrugged as he shovelled more cake in his mouth and hopped up from her desk.  
  
“I wouldn’t worry about it, s’prolly nothin’ ya know?” he reassured with a slap on her shoulder as he wandered towards the door.  
  
She smiled after him as he left though she knew she lacked his optimism. There was something hanging in the air here at the facility, and had been for some time, a bad smell she recognised but couldn’t quite place. Needless to say that she had a very sinking feeling in her stomach that things at Mt, Myka were about to change very suddenly and not necessarily for the better.

* * *

  
It was unusual to gather everyone together in one place, but no one in the room seemed to pay any mind to the fact that they had been called together all at once. The memo had been site-wide it seemed and there was a buzz in the air, an excitable hum that something good was about to happen. There was no doubt the mood rubbed off on Sophie as she laughed and joked with her colleagues while making her way to a seat. Perhaps they were announcing the official end to Shanxi’s war, that the turian's had retreated, that humanity had triumphed and life would, at last, return to normal.  
  
She couldn’t have been more wrong.  
  
Silence dropped into the auditorium at the sound of the screams coming from the stage and it was at the very moment that Sophie realised just how heavily secured the room was. Heavily armed security guards were positioned, not just at every exit but lining the base of the stage. The scream came again, and the concerned whispers that had begun suddenly died. Everyone knew the sound coming from the back of the raised floor wasn’t human and the tension was hanging in the air like a thick fog as the turian was pushed onto the platform at the head of the room.  
  
Some people openly cried out, startled by the fact that an enemy was now in the room with them, others stood from their seats and attempted to climb into the row behind them at the risk of trampling the person sitting there. The rest merely sat, a deer caught in the headlights too frightened to move. The only turians this facility was used to dealing with were dead ones. Needless to say, that the majority of the people working here preferred that. If a turian was one thing, it was violent and with talons sharp enough to rip through their tanks they would think nothing of slaughtering a room full of unarmed scientists.  
  
The sudden panic didn’t last, however, when it became apparent the creature, naked and weak, clearly wasn’t well as he crumpled bodily to the wooden floor in a heap and a pained strangled groan. The head of Operation Pegasus strode onto the stage, bold as brass as he ever was, the hard steel of his boots the only sound in the thick air as they clipped against the polished wood. If Captain Patrick Dowell was anything it all, it was confident. Though that confidence mostly bled profusely into obnoxiousness but he was a powerful man with very powerful friends. It was wise to give him a wide berth when possible. The man commanded respect though this was mostly down to fear more than anything else.  
  
As he was walking towards the creature ahead of him the turian managed to turn onto his back but not without vomiting all over himself as he went; a vile almost black sludge that oozed over him like a thick putrid slime. Choking, the wretched thing tried in vain to reject the substance with his tongue as he feebly attempted to shuffle away from Dowell on his elbows. Not only was he ill, but he was afraid of the man approaching him which raised more questions.  
  
He was dangerously sick, quite possibly dying, so much so that he was utterly incapable of defending himself when Capt. Dowell kicked him in the chest with a hard steel-tipped boot. He hit him hard enough to send him sprawling. The sound of the impact echoed in the room and the silence was so thick even the whines emitted by the sick turian crumpled at Dowel’s feet were louder than Sophie cared for.  
  
She didn’t like the bird folk, liked them no less than any human sitting in this very room with her, but watching one as pitifully ill as the one on the stage being abused so needlessly was enough to make her stomach churn. The best she could do for now was to simply look away and pretend it wasn’t happening.  
  
“You see that, folks?!” Dowell called from his standing point on the stage, his voice a monstrous boom in the fatal silence that filled the room. “That thing there is a sign that we’ve won! That humanity has triumphed!”  
  
Dowell raised his hands as though he expected applause but none came, only disconcerting silence and the perplexed glances between the people in the audience. The lack of response didn’t seem to faze the Captain, however. He didn’t seem to notice at all, like he was in his own little world.  
  
He went on to explain how five of the _“foul beasts”_ had been discovered scoping the area, looking for a way in to the complex to apparently kill, pillage, rape and eat them all alive but had been infiltrated and subdued, no less by him and other Alliance personnel. Apparently, they were to be held in quarantine and “tested” at Mt. Myka before being released to Earth. For what gain he either didn’t say, or Sophie had missed entirely.  
  
Turian’s were a lot of things, violent and ruthless creatures, but they weren’t deviants as far as she knew but it wasn’t the things he was saying that grabbed her but rather the way in which he was saying them. The spiel he rolled out of his mouth was strange and scripted, not at all like the briefings they’d had before and it piqued Sophie’s morbid interest, if only a little.  
  
There was something odd, about the man’s voice at this point, something that Sophie was having trouble getting an angle on, it was flanged, almost… digital… and the thought perturbed her so much that she forced herself to glance up from the interesting point on her lap.  
  
Dowell was stood, towering over his victim like a gladiator in the ring, displaying with arms outstretched and posturing as though to entice the crowd, to encourage him to hurt the male at his feet again. He did so anyway, stepping on his throat, listening to him choke before rolling the creature’s head under his boot but without so much as a single whisper from his audience. He chuckled as he did this, the epitome of a mad man.  
  
But Sophie wasn’t interested in Captain Dowell anymore…  
  
The turian – he was young… so very young, a teen no less in the harsh grip of puberty and it was a wonder that Sophie, the project’s leading turian expert, hadn’t noticed it before now. That desperately sick thing on the stage, that poor retched creature Dowell was kicking, hurting, abusing, the one screaming in agony and whimpering each time the captain went near him was a _child_.  
  
The horror of what she was seeing was etched on all the faces she could see around her. The lab techs, the scientists, even the security guards dotted about the auditorium simply couldn’t fathom what was happening on that stage. Most were simply looking at their feet but almost everyone winced at the young turian’s cries. No one was going to say anything, dared to say anything but all of them feared for that young life struggling feebly against Dowell.  
  
There was something wrong here…  
  
It had to be stopped.  
  
Dowell had to be stopped.  
  
The captain went to land another blow, a hard one this time, his hips twisting to bring in maximum momentum that could almost certainly shatter the ribs of a human, no doubt, his boot would go straight through the youngster's carapace at that range.  
  
Enough was enough, she couldn’t take any more.  
  
It was then that Sophie stood from her seat, the legs of the chair screeching against the floor as the chair careered into the poor person sat behind her, and shouted as loud as her lungs would allow.  
  
“Stop it, Dowell, let him go! He’s just a kid!”  
  
The eyes were upon her, the eyes of every living thing in that room was staring exclusively at her including the boy dying on the stage and it was his gaze that sank into her soul. She didn’t know it yet but it was that one moment which would define her destiny, would change her life as she knew it and she stood there and let him consume her. His eyes - they shone so brightly, like jewels in the dirt, they were haunting and they were sad, so very sad but they were blue, so very blue.  
  
Beautiful.  
  
Cobalt.  
  
She didn’t bother to look around, her focus lying solely within the grip of those bright, sad azure eyes, she already knew what their expressions would say.  
  
_“Sit down!”_  
  
_“Shut up!”_  
  
_“Don’t speak out!”_  
  
_“Don’t draw attention to yourself!”_  
  
_“Don’t draw attention to us!”_  
  
_“Have you lost your god damned mind?!”_  
  
Perhaps she had lost her bearings, but she sure as hell hadn’t lost her morals, and even if that creature on the stage was turian or not, there was no way it deserved to be treated in such a foul way. He was sick, he needed help, not beating within an inch of it’s already painfilled life.  
  
Sophie dared to shift her gaze to her superior and the look her captain gave her shook her to the core, but not enough for her to back down. She stood there still, fists clenched at her side, her jaw tight, defiant and strong and feeling the flames of each and every glare burning into her skin. Someone had to say something, it may as well have been her.  
  
“Excuse me?” Dowell spoke with a tilt to the head as though utterly astonished that anyone had dared to stand up to him at all, but even Sophie knew that what he was doing was so strangely out of character, even for an obnoxious brutal bastard like Patrick Dowell. He had methods of action that some considered a little unorthodox, but he was a good man when all was said and done. Torture, even of an enemy, was not on his resume, that much Sophie was certain of. There was something strange happening here, had been for a while and she had felt it in her waters for the best part of the time she had spent there. It went without saying that she was sure this act was a small piece of this otherwise baffling puzzle.  
  
Even so, his tone was enough to have her rethink her actions and she lost a little of her nerve then, felt it physically wither and retreat into the bowels of her guts, not enough to sit but enough to address the man accordingly, as Alliance personell should.  
  
“I-I think you should let him go… s-s… sir.”  
  
There was quiet again as she lowered her gaze to the chair opposite her. What was she doing? Speaking out against her superior, if anything was going to end in a court martial then this was definitely it. Her career was everything to her, to lose it now would mean to lose part of her very identity.   
  
Her marriage had died in favour of her career, she couldn’t lose this, she just couldn’t…  
  
There was a moment of thick, deafening silence and she could physically feel her flesh prickling beneath her clothes. If the ground was going to open up and swallow her whole now was the time for that to happen.  
  
Eventually he gave an answer after what seemed like a decade of contemplation with a very bland and simple, “Okay.”  
  
The sound of his voice, that tone she couldn’t put her finger on, caused her to look up again. The young turian had managed to turn over onto his belly and was crawling slowly back towards the part of the stage from which he came, the vile black vomit staining the wood behind him like a slug’s trail.  
  
“Okay, Knighton. If that’s what you want, I’ll let him go.” His voice was soft with a caring undertone that Sophie failed to fully believe. She was right to doubt him as he pulled a concealed predator pistol from his waistband and pointed it at the sick turian still dragging his battered body back towards the edge of the stage.  
  
Instinct consumed her as she lurched forward, all but knocking the lab technician in front of her out of his seat. And she reached, she reached for that poor retched boy who’d looked at her with those pitiful icy blue eyes knowing it simply wasn't enough.  
  
_So sad_  
  
_So Beautiful_  
  
_Cobalt_  
  
But she reached regardless.  
  
“Dowell! No…!!”  
  
She was too late. The gun shot resounded through the room and the turian dropped limply to the stage floor as the blood gushed out of the wound in his head, or what was left of it.  
  
And then the screaming started again. That piercing, horrifying screech from before as another turian, female this time tethered around the throat and naked – again like the first - came scrabbling onto the stage with such violent urgency. But her scream wasn’t one of anger, it was sorrow, sorrow for the boy now lying dead on the floor. She reached for him, laying fully on her belly and stretching as far as her gangly arms would allow, succeeding in only touching an outstretched talon which knocked his hand further from hers as she struggled against her captor.  
  
That was her boy, laying there, maybe her son, a brother or even a nephew. Perhaps he was only a trainee she had taken under her wing – Sophie had never bothered to learn the hierarchy of turian relationships. But he was hers, this much was obvious, and the mournful cries she emitted were soul shattering, so much so not another person in that room dared to gaze upwards and witness the scene unfold.  
  
Only her.  
  
Her _handler_   one of Dowell's foot-men who had her tethered via a simple rope around her throat was struggling to get her to her feet and he slipped against her strength on the wooden floor while he pulled at her like one would pull at a disobedient dog. Dowell told that there had been five of these turians, only two were on stage so it seemed that the captain had known what the relationship between these two had been and had purposely brought her along to witness the boy’s execution.  
  
It beggared belief how this man could be so heartlessly cruel. He knew the end game, he had every intention of killing him from the start.   
  
Something was wrong here, so terribly wrong.  
  
She felt the bile froth into her gullet. She was a strong supporter of humanity’s cause, she was not a supporter of prisoner torture. And yet here she was, amongst all the others, being plunged into this waking nightmare.  
  
Eventually the female was subdued, be that through her sheer grief or the fact that she was obviously starving and weak as a result but she was once again taken away from the stage while the frail body of her boy remained.  
  
Sophie dared then to connect gazes with captain Dowell who stared back, not coldly like she expected, but vacantly like the life had just been sucked out of him. It dawned on her then that he wasn’t who he once was, he was something else, a husk of a man. Something had happened to him since his excursion to Driftwood but she wasn’t sure she wanted to find out what that was.  
  
She stared back, disbelieving what had just happened and silently demanding an answer she knew damn well she wasn’t going to get.  
  
“Sit down, Knighton.” Was all Dowell said in the same vacant tone as his expression the pistol used to murder his victim hanging limply by his side, so much so she feared he would simply drop it.   
  
Almost as if without any will of her own, she did as requested and slowly sank back into her seat to receive the rest of the briefing while two porters quickly removed the body from the stage. She didn’t hear the rest of it, her mind so cluttered and unfocused as she desperately clutched at any feasible reason for the circumstances she was in and the event she had just witness, trying to force it to make sense. Trying and failing miserably.  
  
They were bringing live turians back to the facility to perform tests no one knew anything about. This wasn’t part of the deal when she’d signed up to escape her miserable life on Earth. She came here to help, to do good.  
  
Nothing good was going to come of this.  
  
Nothing.

* * *

 

  
Little over a day had passed since the briefing in the auditorium and the niggling feeling that there was more to what Dowell was telling them was gnawing away at Sophie’s mind. She was certain she’d given herself a migraine before heading to her sleepless night the evening previous.  
  
The cold blue of that young turian’s gaze haunted her; each time she closed her eyes they were there in the shadows, staring at her with that unadulterated deep saturated sadness they had held. How they had shone beneath his carapace, so bright, soulful, beautiful, cobalt, was an image branded into her soul and he wouldn’t look away.  
  
He wouldn’t look away.  
  
She had a feeling that vision was not going to leave her anytime soon. Still, even now she didn’t quite know it yet, but that moment that young boy had looked at her, the way his gorgeous eyes had penetrated her and soaked into her flesh had sent her life’s mission askew.  
  
She couldn’t help but think that this whole thing was a lie, that project Pegasus was a _lie_. Her life right now was a **_lie_** and the truth of it all swam in the vision of that boy’s sad blue gaze.  
  
No sooner was she thinking about the turian on the stage that two porters sauntered into her lab pushing a gurney cart between them. The bagged body was small, and neither porter needed to say anything about the subject inside for her to know exactly what she should be expecting beneath the tarp. She felt like she was now being punished for her behaviour in the auditorium. Sophie had dared to defend him and now she must cut him up.  
  
There was a brisk exchange of paperwork and an acknowledged nod, between them before both people left her with the small frail body inside his cold green bag.  
  
The room had dropped cold, a strange prickly chill she could feel in her bones. She stared at the gurney for the longest time, she didn’t want to open it, to see those sad, beautiful cobalt eyes staring at her, to know that the poor retched thing was murdered no thanks to her.  
  
Eventually she unzipped the bag, so carefully so not to disturb the body unnecessarily, and her fears were answered with the dead blank stare of those very same blue eyes beneath the dried crust of blood from the wound in his skull. They hadn’t even bothered to clean him before bringing him here and his eyes were no longer beautiful. They were dead and they stared into her very being, slicing through her like a blade.  
  
Dead, cold and unforgiving.  
  
Sophie had never felt an emotion quite like this one as she felt the blood in her veins turn to ice at the very sight of him and the thought occurred to her just then that he would have had a name, an identity, a _family_. She was almost certain the female who scrabbled on stage the moment Dowell shot him was his mother. Sophie was certain she would never know.  
  
The thought resounded in her head and it made her chest ache as though her heart would shatter inside of her.  
  
For almost her whole military career she had dealt with the dead or the dying; had happily volunteered to dissect them and learn from them. She’d considered herself a cold-hearted woman, with no feelings to give the deceased other than what she could gain and learn from them. It was easier that way, to deal with them as _‘things’_ and not _‘people’_.  
And here she was, driven almost to tears by the mere sight of this one young alien, a member of a race she despised with what she thought was every fibre of her being. But there was the fact that she’d witnessed his death by the hands of her own kind, that she’d seen his unadulterated suffering all thanks to the caring touch of humanity.  
  
He wasn’t just a turian, he was a _child_ , a young boy with his whole life ahead of him who didn’t deserve to die the way he did.  
  
Everything had changed, was still changing and she had to move with this new tide lest her own remorse swallow her whole.  
  
It was then with a confident sigh that Sophie decided that she wouldn’t play by Alliance’s rules today. She would not tear this poor boy apart for the good of scientific discovery. He died without a scrap of dignity, she would not be the one to take away anything else. It had become apparent only a few days ago that she wasn’t learning anything new from the dead turians they brought in anymore anyway. Her research had gone as far as it could possibly go, maybe now was as good a time as any to stop.  
  
But one thing she was interested in was the black sludge still caking the inside of the boy’s mouth. This aspect of avian illness was new to her. Though mostly dried and beginning to crack on his body she fetched a dish and scraped what was left of the slime from his tongue into it. The smell was revolting, a putrid mess of rotting flesh and decomposing food it was difficult to determine exactly what it was she was smelling at all. Either way it made her cringe as she retrieved her samples.  
  
Setting the dish down on the side she scanned it briefly with her omni-tool – a new toy she had received when leaving for Shanxi coupled with a painful implant inserted into her brain, for ease of gathering information she had been told – before transferring the gathered information into the computer on the desk. A much simpler way of breaking down a substance than it used to be; once upon a time it could take days to analyse a compound, it was amazing how quickly technology had come along since the discovery of the Prothean ruins on Mars.  
  
It took all of a few minutes for the analysing equipment to scan the components, strip them back and flash the results on the screen in front of her. What she saw wasn’t at all what she was expecting, though if she was honest with herself she wasn’t quite sure what she was expecting at all.  
  
Either way, the results had her sinking back into her seat.  
  
There was only a literal trace of dextro-amino acids in the substance, possibly made up from his own stomach lining and digestive juices, the rest – that being almost ninety-five percent of it – was purely levo. She clicked through the components dragged from the turian’s oral excretions thinking she would find bits and pieces of levo-amino food matter (the creatures were starving so it was only right to believe that they were trying to eat levo-amino foods in desperation) only to find strange minerals and micro-organisms nestled in the black mess.  
  
At first she failed to understand what they meant, the components making up the vomit found in the boy’s mouth didn’t quite add up to human food. And then it dawned on her, hitting her like a hard blow to the gut.  
  
This wasn’t food she was looking at.  
  
She needed to slice his throat open just to prove herself wrong, to know for absolute certain that what she was seeing was a lie, that what she was thinking was a **_lie_**.  
  
She hoped to whatever deities may be out there that she was in fact wrong…  
  
She did just that, opened the flesh and flushed out what was left of the black sludge in the creature’s throat. The oesophagus was carefully cut open, the gizzard removed though she managed to spill the stones inside it all over the floor in her haste.  
  
But then she saw it, a sight that forced her to take a step back from the body on the table and contemplate exactly what this poor child had gone through before being paraded in front of her team like a circus animal.  
  
It wasn’t a lie, she had never been more ashamed to be proven right and the fresh cuts gouged into the turian boy’s throat confirmed it.  
  
He hadn’t simply consumed levo-amino acids. He hadn’t willingly consumed them at all.  
  
He’d been force-fed, the crust of blue blood she was now noticing around the hinges of his hard mouth proved his jaws and mandibles had been held open – though too wide to tear the flesh and make him bleed like that – while his attacker had literally crammed dirt down his throat.  
  
This turian, this young boy, this poor wretched child, had been force-fed soil. Sophie pieced it all together in her mind as she turned away, the scalpel falling from her fingers and clinking to the floor while she slowly slipped her body into the nearest seat, her legs little more than jelly.  
  
The dirt had been shoved forcefully down his throat and it hadn’t settled well in his stomach. As a result his body had attempted to purge the stomach but the reaction between the dextro and the levo-amino acids now in his system had caused the soil to froth and created the putrid mess he’d vomited on stage. His body couldn’t reject it, the foam created from the reaction would have eventually filled his lungs and he would have suffocated as a result before the soil even had a chance to poison his entire system.  
  
Perhaps the shot to the head was the kindest way to go after such an act of heinous brutality. And for what gain? Why would soldiers in a reputable research division force-feed a child dirt? Did she really want to know?  Had they brought him here to show her what Dowell had done to him?  
  
It took Sophie a few minutes to realise the sobs she could hear echoing in the lab were her own.

* * *

 

  
It was difficult to say just how long she’d been sat there merely staring at the body on the gurney; could have been minutes, hell, it could have been centuries if Sophie hadn’t known any better. But she sat there still, her eyes long dried but sore and her head throbbing in rhythm with her pulse while she mindlessly tapped a pen on the metal leg of the chair she was currently slumped in.  
  
She wasn’t even sure of what she was contemplating, her head was a solid ugly mess of fear, shame, guilt and passionate fury that she had been thrust into this position; a position of her own damn making. Was this the price she was ultimately paying for running away from Earth? Had she been so damn naïve to think anything good would come of project Pegasus?  
  
She had come here to help, to learn and do good - not for this… anything but this. But she was just one person, how could she hope to put a stop to project Pegasus altogether if this was the route they were taking? Would she be willing to throw her entire career away for the sake of a few aliens? She could just up and leave, go back to Earth and take a job in pharmaceuticals, anything but staying here.  
  
It was strange to think that all this time she’d been lied to, the entire facility had been lied to. The Turians weren’t the monsters here, the humans were all along, like they always had been though humanities checkered history; a plague of locusts in the crop.  
  
Invade and destroy; it was all humanity knew, all they had ever known.  
  
It was then that she heard the footsteps in the hall, they were approaching fast and inevitably - as she thought they would - they entered her lab, Richard at the forefront of the group of four men. He held a rifle, as did the other three stood behind him, all members of the security team Richard managed.  
  
She flinched initially, thinking her outburst in the auditorium had caused for them to hold her under arrest until the facility knew what to do with her, but the kindness in her friend’s eyes stated otherwise.  
  
“Sophie, ma'am? We’re bustin’ them out!” His voice was an unwelcome boom against the tinny silence of the spacious room.  
  
She squinted at him, her eyes dropping to the gun in his hands before flicking back to his face. He looked agitated which wasn’t like him.  
  
“Bustin’ who out, exactly?” she asked tediously, the stupidest question of the millennium if ever there was one.  
  
“The birds, ma’am.” He nodded as he spoke, there was a hue of confidence around him that she had never seen before, it was empowering to witness it if Sophie was honest with herself. “There’s still three left. We ain't about to let em die the way that youngin' did.”  
  
The last statement brought her to life. She recalled Dowell stating there were five turians captured but now only three remained, one was laying on the gurney in front of her, what happened to the other one? She turned to look at the men before Richard continued not directly addressing anyone but making the statement all the same, “One of ‘em is that Ghost…”  
  
Her eyes widened at that. The Ghost - a turian ground specialist who could destroy an entire squadron in seconds and then disappear without a trace - was here in this very building as a prisoner. Ghosts were common in turian squads, there would always be at least one, and the bastards were always so slippery with their cloaking abilities it was near on impossible to pick them off when in the heat of a fight.  
  
But Sophie knew that this wasn’t any ordinary ghost Richard was referring to, this was _The Ghost_ – a monstrous beast like no turian ever seen before by any human, and almost the entire colony had thought of him as nothing other than a myth used to frighten fellow troops.  
  
Richard was confirming that the myth was actually a very real threat they had been fighting all along.   
  
“Ghost?” was all she said as she got to her feet but it seemed her voice hadn’t been heard as Richard moved his focus to the dead turian child on the gurney. His expression was grim, forlorn as he glanced over the body.  
  
“He’s so small, Sophie…” he spoke so softly, never before had she head that tremor of remorse in Richard’s otherwise brash tone and it tugged at her heart to hear it. He was thinking of home, thinking of his daughter when he gazed at the boy on his cold steel bed.  
  
She bowed her head a little before walking around the gurney to meet her friend stood at the far end, tracing a finger over the metal frame as she went.  
  
“I know,” was all she was able to say, what else was there to say?  
  
A thick silence settled between them and the other men in the room, strange glances were passed between them and the young dead boy on his cold steel bed before Sophie decided to broach the inevitable subject.  
  
“How do you hope to save the others with just the three of you?” her question was flat, deadpan but necessary. Her concern lay with Dowell. His voice still resounded in her head, that strange digitised voice and those eyes, so cold she could have sworn she could feel his gaze on her skin. Something had happened to him, something awful and she feared that he was going to be a little more than just a thorn in their side.  
  
“There’s more than just us.” The clarification wasn’t exactly comforting but it was enough to spur her into action as she all but span on her heel to retrieve her phalanx pistol – a gift from her father - from a single drawer in her desk. Sliding it open the gun sat there in the cavity, always loaded, never fired and she found herself hesitating to simply pluck it out of the drawer.  
  
Was all of this really worth it? Was it worth rescuing a few starving turians for the sake of her conflicted conscience? Was all of this worth the cost of her entire career?  
  
Sophie turned once more to look at the youngster on the gurney, realising now how he had been the catalyst to her way of thinking, that those piercing cobalt eyes that haunted her were the ones that forced her to see that these creatures weren’t monsters. That they were people, that it could have easily been the boot on the other foot so damned easily. Hell, it was only a month ago that this was, indeed, a reality.  
  
She grabbed the phalanx and slammed the drawer shut to the mild surprise of the security personnel in front of her, all of them poised with their own weapons, avenger assault rifles if she knew her guns correctly. But it was Richard she addressed, brash, thick set Richard with his six tonne shoulders poised to fight and that grin on his face like he was ready for action. It was then she truly realised that he hadn’t come here to simply tell her there would be an uprising, he had come to recruit her for the job.  
  
“If we’re going to do this, we’re going to have to do it now.” Her voice was stoic and hard but Richard nodded once before motioning the others out of the door. Sophie followed and fell in line with Richard who marched up front. It was only as they passed each doorway that’s he suddenly realised just how eerily quiet it was.  
  
“Where is everyone?”  
  
“There was some…” Richard rolled his shoulders as he spoke, “…Resistance. I’ve had to place some guards on duty to make sure none of ‘em interferes with us.”  
  
It was quite startling that this coup had taken place without her knowledge at all and she found herself wondering how she’d managed to miss it in the first place. Had she really that absorbed in her own spiral of self pity?  
  
“Was I the last one you came to see?”  
  
“You were safe in your lab, Sophie…” he hesitated as he turned his gaze upon her, it was soft and caring as Richard was beneath the surface. “… Ain’t no use you getting’ involved in a fight. I knew you’d be on our side anyway.”  
  
That much was true, the way she had acted in the auditorium was probably enough to assume that she didn’t agree with the needless abuse of extra-terrestrials.  
  
Still they marched on, though it became apparent that Sophie had no clue where they were going though before she could ask the question they had already reached their destination. Sophie looked up the panel of the door, her eyes tracing the edge of the frame before she reached the crudely applied stickers that identified the occupant; Capt, Patrick Dowell.  
  
“Does he know?” Was all she asked, pistol in hand and awaiting Richards order.  
  
He simply shook his head, a puzzled furrow to his already heavy brow.  
  
“Ain’t no one seen him since the briefing.” The comment was ominous as best, the last thing Sophie could recall from that evening was his strange voice and the way in which he spoke. She had tried to blot that part from her memory, her focus lying purely on the young turian he brutally tortured and murdered on stage. The fleeting though made her stomach churn before she swallowed it and nodded for Richard to open the door to the office. There was a brief nod of understanding from him before he reached for the panel and the office slid into view.

All of them paused in the entryway.   
  
Dowell had been dead for a while.  
  
He sat in his chair, arms dangling at the sides while his head was rolled all the way back so his face was no longer visible to those entering. It was clear how he’d died given the blood spatter on the wall behind his desk. A gunshot to the head – fitting considering how he’d killed that poor wretched creature only the day previous. But still, most of the scientists here were unarmed, Sophie was struggling to come to terms with the fact that the man was murdered, no one here liked the turians enough for a revenge killing and as far as the facility was aware the other living birds were restrained and stripped bare.  
  
How had no one noticed that he was absent? Had no one been in to report to him? How could the entire facility not know that Captain Patrick Dowell was dead?!  
  
The smell was only just beginning to corrupt the air in the room, but it seemed the untrained noses of the rest of the party hadn’t noticed that as they made their way warily into the room. Sophie led the way and held up a hand to the men to prevent them entering any further. She was used to looking at dead things, nothing fazed her, she would probably be the best suited for this task than a security team. Plus it was glaringly obvious, just by looking at him slumped back in his office chair that this was no ordinary dead man.  
  
She approached with caution and it all became clear from the side profile that he’d killed himself with the pistol still sticking out of his mouth. It seemed as he died his jaw had spasmed shut around the barrel of the gun. The sight was awful.  
  
“Oh, Jesus…” she heard herself whisper as she inspected Dowell as close as she would dare once she'd noticed the odd wound around his mouth. Strange blue cracks threaded through the skin of Dowels lips like an infection spreading from his mouth over his face. It corrupted his features like a crack in the ground and Sophie noticed one of the threads reached up through his left cheek and into his left eye which was also an odd eery blue. It looked like ink had been spilt directly into his eye though there was a glow to it, an actual physical light bleeding out of the cracks.  
  
It was like nothing she’d ever seen before, ever in her entire medical career. It was so strange, it reminded her of a circuit board one would find in a computer and her curiosity was getting the better of her until her good sense kicked in.  
  
“What the fuck…?” She went to touch his face, to physically examine this “infection” but she thought better of it recoiling and stepping away, instead scanning the man’s dishevelled desk for some kind of clue as to what was happening. She had no idea what this lesion on his face was or if it was infectious.  
  
“Sophie?” Richard called from the far end of the office, his heavy footsteps giving away that fact that he was trying to approach.  
  
“Stay there!” Sophie’s voice was far more aggressive than she knew it should have been, but even as she shot a hand up forbidding her friend from coming any closer it was better the message get through instantly. “Don’t come any closer. There’s something…” She couldn’t find her words as her hand found the only thing of any relevance on the table. “… Something’s not right…”  
  
A note, she picked it up and glanced over the words written in a childlike scrawl that raised far more questions than it answered.  
  
_Won’t let them take me. Cannot be stopped._  
_Won’t let them take me. Cannot be stopped._  
_Won’t let them take me. Cannot be stopped._  
_Won’t let them take me. Cannot be stopped._  
  
She stood and reread the note once, twice, three, four, five more times before she eventually turned back to Dowell just sitting there, his brains pasted across his office wall with his predator sticking out of his mouth. Were these words the ramblings of a mad man? Or was it a warning? She didn’t know, would never know but one thing she was certain of was that she had been right all along the night previous. That something awful had happened at Driftwood, and whatever had changed him, Dowell was attempting to bring it here by his own will or not, she wasn’t sure. But she was sure that whatever it was, was dangerous.  
  
Eventually she dropped the note back where she’d found it and backed away from the body back towards the door.  
  
“What’s going on, Sophie?” Richards voice held a tremor of dread, not that she blamed him. Something strange was going down here at Mt.Myka but she wasn’t sure she wanted to know exactly what that was. All she knew as absolute is that this was too heavy and she had to get away.  
  
“We need to evacuate the facility, tell your men to get everyone out and get as far away from here as possible. Don't go dishing out co-ordinates until everyone is off-site.”  
  
Sophie could hear the fear in her own voice as she spoke and it wasn’t until Richard grabbed her arm to prevent her from simply leaving the room that she realised she was shaking. The nerves had caught up with her it seemed.  
  
“What did you see?” His voice was a whisper but one dripping with concern, but even then she simply couldn’t fathom the words to answer him and thought best to dodge it as best as she could. There was something about the state of Dowell that terrified her to her very core, something cold and metallic touching her from the inside just thinking about it. She needed to get away and the less said about it the better.   
  
“Lock the door when we leave, no one can come in here after we go.”  
  
“Yeah…” he stood up straight, rolling a single shoulder as he grasped his rifle a little tighter and gazed towards the dead man. “Let the Alliance find him.”  
  
Sophie placed a firm hand on the security officers shoulder if only to drag his attention back to her. It was for the best she’d figured that the less he knew about what she’d seen the better.  
  
“The turian prisoners, where are they?”  
  
He shook his head as he thought about his answer. “I dunno about the other two but I know the Ghost is holed up in sector three. He’s a big fucker, ma’am. He had to be sedated to get him in the cell, Ain’t never seen no bird like that before. Scared even me and I'm as big as they come."  
  
Richard’s description of the alien didn’t quite register. She knew the legend of the Ghost quite well, was still struggling to come to terms with the fact that it was even real, but she nodded along regardless before giving her next order. The uprising was to free the turians in the facility, to put an end to unnecessary suffering and torture that poor boy had already suffered, and that was exactly what they were going to do.  
  
“Take me to him.”

* * *

  
The pair of them marched down the corridors towards Sector Three, the cell block. In reality, it was merely a storage area, but the door’s were reinforced and easily lockable, quite suitable for locking up turians with talons sharp enough to rip entire bulkheads away from their fittings.  
  
They passed door after door after door as Richard led her through the facility. It didn’t take long before they’d reached the holding cell – a sluice room if Sophie wasn’t mistaken, she was certain she had brought low risk lab equipment here to be cleaned a few times - they were keeping a monster turian locked up in a sluice room? – but the door was guarded by yet another one of Richard’s men.  
  
“Whoa, guys, where’s the fire?” he snorted, standing from his stool and tipping his hips to one side. Was this guy for real? Or did he honestly have no clue what was going on at all? Before she could speak, however, Richard had already started dishing out the orders.  
  
“We need to release the prisoner. Ain’t no more turian’s gonna die here.” He was assertive and bold with his words but the other guard, the cocky sort it seemed, was resisting orders.  
  
“Why would I want to do that?”  
  
It was Sophie’s turn to interject and she did so by standing in front of Richard to show the boy that she meant business. Sophie was a lot of things, but meek simply wasn’t one of them.  
  
“I don’t know if you’ve noticed but we’re in the middle of an uprising here. Open the door and release the turian, that’s an order.”  
  
The young man began to shift his weight from one foot to the other. He was getting nervous and it dawned on Sophie then that he knew exactly what he was guarding and he was reluctant to have any involvement. Not that she really blamed him, but there was a mission at hand here that had to be completed.  
  
“Ma’am, I-I… I really don’t think that’s a good idea… This guy in here…” he pointed behind him at the door. “He ain’t very friendly.”  
  
Her patience with the guard had all but dissipated. She wanted away from this place, but she was damned if she would let Mt.Myka take any more lives with it. She pulled out her gun and pointed it at the young man who recoiled in shock, his back slamming into the sluice room door.  
  
She heard Richard call her name but he didn’t attempt to stop her.  
  
“I’m not going to ask you again. Open it.”  
  
The young man stared at the barrel of her gun, as it became quite clear that he was, infact unarmed. He wasn’t there to prevent the turian from escaping, he was there to stop the wrong people getting in.  
  
“He’s d-dangerous, ma’am,” He stuttered, his hands lifting defensively as his eyes shifted sporadically between the gun and Sophie’s steely gaze. “That thing… It’ll tear you apart if you give it half the chance.”  
  
“I will be the judge of that, now open the cell.”  
  
He contemplated her demand but only for a moment as it seemed he feared the pistol more than he feared the prisoner she wanted to release.  
  
But what she saw within, again, wasn’t what she was expecting and she almost gasped out loud as the thing within was revealed to her. It seemed today was just full of surprises.  
  
She couldn’t see much as the turian prisoner was being kept in the dark with only thick blue crate rope around his wrists holding him in place. There was a halo of light reflected from out in the corridor shining from his carapace. He looked like a mountain range, all crags and spines jutting out of his body. He was like no other turian Sophie had ever seen even in this light. He wasn’t just big, he was enormous and it was any wonder he even fit into the tiny room at all.  
  
Sophie figured him for a freak or mutant.  
  
If she hadn’t known better she could have easily mistaken the Ghost for a dragon.  
  
But his body wasn’t what grabbed her attention as he lifted his massive head and locked his piercing, vengeful eyes with hers. A tremor passed through her as he did so, a behemoth of a thing he was simply sitting in the dark and tied to a wall where cleaning machinery had once been kept he made no other motion to move, but his eyes…  
  
His eyes were captivating.  
  
Beautiful.  
  
Brimming with raw unadulterated hatred.  
  
They were purple like amethysts.  
  
And they burned.  
  
His breaths were heavy, violent, and he smelled distinctly of hot winter spices; Sophie was reminded of Christmas by an open log fire but the sight of him, the sheer size of this thing was baffling at best, so much so that she was reluctant to get close to him at all. But he didn’t move, he just sat there staring up at her somewhat expectantly, mandibles twitching on either side of his face.  
  
It took a few uncertain moments and an odd murmur of doubt from the two men behind her to spur Sophie into action with a start. She crouched before the monster before her and carefully he watched her, followed her slowly with his gaze while she sank to her knees, his eyes never changing and that odd ethereal purple glow from his gaze burned into her.  
  
There was so much hate there lingering in those eyes; hate and fear.  
  
The notion shook her, if only a little, this turian, this monstrous freak they’d somehow managed to cage up in this tiny room could easily rip them all apart of he so wanted to, could devastate a small town all on his own given the mass of sheer bulk and muscle even Sophie could see from the back lighting. If the rumours surrounding this beast were true he had indeed, done just that more than once.  
  
And he was afraid.  
  
The humans had all but evicted these creatures from Shanxi, literally a handful of them remained be that through utter stubbornness… or perhaps they were stranded here, Sophie didn’t know. But she was finding herself questioning why the hierarchy would leave such a creature behind. Surely he would be more use to them back on their home planet than stuck dying out here.  
  
She didn’t have the time to question the notion for long as she reached for the rope and began to loosen it. It was surprising that he allowed her to do so, but she could feel him quaking under her hands.  
  
He was shivering.  
  
Sophie was walking into this completely blind. She didn’t know how this release would go, she was granting him his freedom after all, had no idea what to expect at all, but it was at that very moment the rope hit the floor that time itself came to a slow.  
  
The Ghost wrapped a strong thick hand around her throat, the expression in his eyes not changing an octave, picked her up and slammed her entire body into the cell wall. The force was so strong the wind was knocked out of her but the powerful hand around her throat prevented her from dragging air back into her lungs. She’d given him freedom and he’d attacked her.  
  
He stared at her, that beautiful amethyst gaze bored into her being as he squeezed her neck and watched her choke and writhe and kick against his grip. She clawed at his hand, desperately trying to prise his thick fingers away from her and even reached for him, grabbing for his face but his arms were much longer than hers.  
  
He just stood there, arm outstretched and glared at her from beneath his heavy charcoal brow as she slowly started to die in his hand.  
  
And yet still she fought as her lungs burned deep in her chest.  
  
She could feel the life leaving her, the air leaving her lungs and her throat being crushed under the Ghosts powerful hand. As she could feel the darkness creeping in, her eyes becoming heavy she saw the slight flicker of his huge mandibles as his mouth unfolded in front of her, those sharp needle like teeth glinting in the artificial light of the corridor.  
  
He wasn’t going to just bite her, no, he was going to tear her apart in front of the others like they had done to his kind.  
  
He was going to make an example of her in front of the others, just like Dowell had done to that young boy back in the auditorium.  
  
She thought she could hear people shouting, screaming, she could hear conflict and gunfire while she still feebly struggled against the huge turian’s throttling hold.  
  
But it didn’t matter.  
  
She could feel the icy claws of death reaching into her as her entire body went limp and she ceased to struggle against him.  
  
This was how it was going to end for her.  
  
She’d tried to help, to free the remaining turian's from the facility and this was her reward for doing so. But even as she gazed into that gaping maw filled with its sharp metallic teeth all she could see were that boy’s eyes staring back at her from deep within his throat.  
  
They were so blue.  
  
So beautiful  
  
_Cobalt._


	2. The Chamber

He was a simple boy who’d lead a simple life, grew up in a simple town as part of a simple family and didn’t want for much. Military life was a huge change from the existence he’d been so used to in the sleepy suburbs in upstate New York. But the Alliance took care of him, took care of his small, growing family and his wanderlust had never been stronger.

Richard Barnsley had always wanted a little more for himself, had always honed an ambitious nature and the opportunities the Alliance military offered were too good to pass up. His father had been a carpenter by trade, had wanted Richard to follow in his footsteps and take over the small family business. But it was Richards insatiable sense of adventure that had him following a different path. 

What he hadn’t expected was a sudden transferal from the Marine Corp to Shanxi. Apparently, he’d shown some leadership qualities they needed to head a security force for the facilities being manned in the effort against the avian invaders. He’d been told there would be no front-line action and his job was to manage a team of men to look after a bunch of scientists. It was more money and offered more benefits which - in his mind at least - balanced out his time away from Jenny and their girl.

Simple enough.

Or so he thought…

And here he was now, face to face with this monstrosity of a creature. Richard had seen turians before had never had to face one though, the normal ones were big enough on their own with their weird shells and skull-like faces. But never anything quite like what he was staring at now.

This thing, this… Ghost as he was known throughout the barracks here on Shanxi, was enormous. Where the usual turians had the raised collar, this one had more of a hood with huge plates sticking out of his shoulders. Everything about this guy was exaggerated compared to what he knew as ‘usual’. He looked like something out of a horror movie and his brain truly struggled to comprehend what he was seeing.

It went without saying that the bird placed the fear of God inside of him. He hadn’t even noticed the security officer appointed to hold the door had long since gone. Smart man…

“Put her down, you ugly son-of-a-bitch!” He was screaming, his rifle aimed dead centre to the beast’s head and yet the monster simply ignored him. He had to do something, he couldn’t just stand idly by and wait for the Ghost to kill his friend, he couldn’t, he wouldn’t.

He’d tried firing a warning shot past the beasts head, but the oversized freak of a bird was so embroiled in strangling Sophie he didn’t even seem to notice he was being shot at.

The thing was massive, much bigger than Richard recalled when they’d dragged his hulking body into the sluice room only a day ago. The tiny space was chosen to give the turian restricted movement; the theory being that the less he could move around the less damage he could cause if he flipped out.

Sophie was going purple, her strangled cries and gasps growing weaker and he noticed that the fight was leaving her, he couldn’t stand here anymore, he had to do something, _anything_ but killing the bird would go against everything they’d done so far. There was a reason this one was being kept separate from the others, there was a reason Pegasus wanted to keep this one alive and intact. Killing him just wasn’t an option.

Richard braced himself knowing he’d have to go in, knowing he’d have to face down the Ghost alone; this _thing_ that had been nothing but a myth only a few days ago was so very real and the feeling of that revelation was surreal and jarring at best. And here it was in the flesh, stood in a sluice room throttling the life out of the only true friend he’d ever had in this damned place.

How he wished he was home with Jenny and his little girl just sipping a beer and watching the game. How he wished he was anywhere but here.

But he had to save her, his only friend throughout this excursion. Sophie couldn’t die by turian hands. He had to knock that big fucker out! The bigger they are the harder they fall; surely that same rule applied to turians.

And then instinct consumed him as his feet propelled him towards the conflict. Time slowed almost to a stop as Richard pulled his rifle back, his entire body weight behind it as the monster before him turned his horrible charcoal face towards him somewhat habitually. He’d sensed him coming then, and he was poising for a counter attack.

The Ghost pulled away from Sophie, losing sudden interest in her and literally dropped her from his monstrous grip in order to turn on Richard and swipe the rifle from his hand. It barred its teeth, a disgusting metallic grin as it snarled at him and glowered from beneath his dark heavy brow. Sophie plummeted to the floor and crumpled at the Ghosts feet but it was such a relief to hear her take a long - albeit laboured - breath as she hit the tiles.

The turian was too slow to attack as the butt of Richards rifle smacked the Ghost right in the side of his head with a thick, sickening crack and sent him careering back into the room with an agonising howl. The creature ploughed into what Richard could only assume was a dishwasher and he went down with such force the machine literally sent its innards crashing into the room. Glass tubes, dishes and jugs smashed into tiny shards as they clattered from the washer.

There was a moment of surprise, either Richard didn’t know his own strength or the turian wasn’t as strong as he looked. Although he quickly surmised that the creatures were starving out here on the colony so it was plausible that the Ghost was easily fatigued purely through lack of nourishment.

Either way, the turian didn’t stay down long, he was back on all fours sooner than Richard had initially hoped. It seemed attempting to knock the thing out was going to prove a little harder than he’d originally anticipated.

“Sophie?! Sophie, come on, on your feet!” He was hissing orders at her to get up and without taking his eyes off of the enemy now shrouded in shadow - the only thing Richard was able to see was the outline of his oddly shaped shell and those fierce purple eyes – he moved over to the woman still on the floor and tugged at the collar of her coat blindly.

Sophie was now on her front, attempting to roll on to her back as she coughed, gasped and spluttered, desperately trying to get her breath back. There was little moving for her right now as she lay there re-learning how to breathe, but Richard thanked God for his burst of courage to get the Ghost away from her before he’d finished the job.

The turian didn’t stay in his shadowed spot for long and Richard needed to keep his distance. Carefully he began to step away from Sophie who was still fighting for air on the floor and began shifting back out of the room into the hallway. It was obvious that the Ghost’s interests lay with him now. Richard was the threat and it was Richard it would focus on.

He moved like nothing else Richard had ever seen and he was at a major disadvantage with having no training on how to fight these things. He looked prehistoric; a bizarre amalgam of man and reptile - not like a bird at all - but he moved like an insect. Not fluid but twitching as he rose out of the shadow; a strange twisting dance if one could call it that. He was trying to intimidate him, like a giant mantis hunting its prey. The mandibles on the sides of his face fluttered like wings as he awkwardly crawled out of the darkness, and he growled but like nothing he’d ever heard before, reminiscent of a diesel engine being turned over. It was true to assume that they clearly hadn’t thought this part of the plan through very well… This monster was so blind in his fury that he was going to kill them both.

Richard was a very solid six feet tall, this thing had to be at least eight if not bigger. He’d never been more terrified of anything in his life and he could literally feel the colour draining from him as the turian got to his feet and towered over him.

“Aw, jeez,” Richard was gasping for breath, the sheer gravity of the situation was beginning to dawn on him as he took in the sight of his attacker on the far end of the room. “Fuck off, man, c’mon, we’re trying to fuckin’ help you here!!”

Either the monster turian wasn’t listening or he simply didn’t understand what he was saying – the latter was the most likely explanation – but the Ghost dropped back onto all fours while his mouth dropped open, a dragon’s maw filled with needle-esk metallic teeth and a writhing, grotesque blue tongue that lolled out of his jaws before he emitted a scream that had Richard drop to his knees.

The sound was piercing, so much so he could feel it reverberating in his bones. He feared his eardrums would simply pop and instinct demanded he squint against it and attempt to cover his ears.

A clever strategy it seemed as the Ghost was on top of him before he even had the chance to open his eyes. He forced Richard onto his back, unfolded his maw and attempted to wrap his jaws around his head.

Lucky for Richard he’d anticipated the attack and quickly jammed the length of his rifle into the Ghost’s mouth. Even considering the turian’s malnourishment he was still damn strong and the struggle that ensued was the toughest one Richard had ever fought. The beast was literally biting through his gun, his sharp teeth sinking into the metal as Richard struggled against the sheer force of the turians neck.

Richard somehow managed to hook his legs beneath the Ghosts enormous bulk and forcefully pushed him off with as much strength as his muscles would allow. It was enough to lift the bird’s weight and with a solid right hook he socked the turian square on the jaw as he removed his now mangled and consequently useless rifle from between the creature’s jaws.

The blow spun the oversized turian into the wall long enough for Richard to get to his feet and continue to pummel his attacker in the head with the butt of his misshapen weapon. He managed to land only three solid blows before the alien was able to break through the attack and wrapped his massive thick fingers around his entire head.

The monster-bird then smashed Richards face into the wall only once but that single blow was enough to break his nose with a sickening snap and have him almost bite through his lower lip before throwing him across the hallway. He went sprawling and slid to a stop before rolling onto his back.

His eyes were streaming, blood was running down the back of his throat in thick clumps, his head throbbed and all in all the pain was utterly immeasurable but he’d done all he could. His will to fight was starting to wane, there was no way in the entire galaxy that Richard was going to be able to take down this monster on his own.

The Ghost was about to lunge, the thick muscles in his arms rippling as he coiled himself to attack and Richard was powerless to stop it. This was it, this was it for him and his thoughts went to his girlfriend and their daughter as he simply lay back, closed his eyes and awaited his fate.

A fate that never came.

Eventually he opened his eyes and it was Sophie stood between him and the turian the latter of which standing and swaying slightly on the spot quite obviously from sever fatigue though he was still so tightly coiled, still on the offensive and he glared at Sophie with such vile hatred. Those strange mandibles still fluttered like the wings of a moth, but he was calming, slowly, but calming none-the-less.

“Not him!” her voice was raspy but her tone was harsh as she held up a hand to the Ghost.

“Let him go, he has a family, a little girl… please… not him…” She was still breathless and the bruising around her throat was already starting to come through, sickly shades of purple and yellow where the turian had grabbed her and she was bleeding where his talons had sunk into her skin.

“I’ll help… there’s… there’s others here. Like you. We’ll find them. Let me help.”

It dawned on Richard then that the huge turian could actually understand what she was saying as an odd hue of understanding swept across those burning purple eyes and his gaze shifted from Sophie to him. His breaths were still viciously heavy and he grunted and snuffled in response, those mandibles hitching upwards as he did so and seemingly unable to speak himself. It seemed that he wasn’t all that intelligent…

“Sophie…?” Richard started, his voice muffled by the tremendous swelling of his mouth, but he was quickly silenced by a fierce shake of Sophie’s other hand and he saw then that she was holding her pistol but she was holding it away from her attacker. She was showing the turian submission just by her body language – stooped low and a single palm spread defensively - and it seemed the way she held her palm up to his face that this was enough for him to stand down and take stock of what was really happening around him. The rage was dissipating but the anger remained, that much was obvious.

She turned towards Richard then, her stance unchanging and he could see tears in her eyes pooled around her lower lashes. She wasn’t just scared, she was petrified and yet still she had placed herself between them with no thought for her own safety.

“You need to leave.” Her voice was little more than a whisper.

He couldn’t believe what he was hearing, did she honestly think that he would just willingly leave her here with that… that thing? They’d come here to do good, to help the turians escape and free them from a fate far worse than death and this is how they’d been repaid. They’d freed this monster from his tiny prison and he’d attacked them.  He lay there for a moment, not quite understanding why Sophie was saying these things and shook his head.

“Sophie, no, I can’t…”

“Please.” Her voice cracked and a fat tear betrayed her and rolled down her cheek as she spoke “You have to go.”

There was something in the way she looked at him, something in her manner that forced him to take her seriously. He didn’t want to leave her with the turian, didn’t want to leave her with that dangerous thing that had tried to destroy her only moments ago. But again, the way she looked at him, she wasn’t thinking of him at all… she was thinking about his family. He had to do the same, to think about Jenny, about their daughter and the lives he would be leaving behind if he was to stay.

Sophie was right, he had to go. Staying here was no longer an option.

He nodded, begrudgingly so as he slowly staggered to his feet, but not without giving the Ghost, who still stood there all meat and scales, one final glare from beneath he bloodied brow. He thought about dishing out a threat, to let the turian know that if he hurt the girl in front of him again he’d hunt him down and make him suffer. But where was the point? The turian was still standing whereas Richard was battered and in need of hospital care. He was certain he’d lost at least three teeth during the scuffle.

But he didn’t need telling a third time as he turned on his heel and began to shuffle down the hallway.

He just hoped he got to see Sophie again. She didn’t deserve to be left here but she had given him very little choice.

* * *

She didn’t quite know what she was doing, didn’t quite remember the conscious decision to stand between the Ghost and Richard but he’d tried to save her, had in fact saved her and she guessed she owed him as much in kind. What she didn’t expect was for the turian still stood before her to actually stop.

But he had, and he’d stopped very suddenly as though her act of utter selflessness (or stupidity depending on which way you wanted to look at it) had taken him by complete surprise. Perhaps it had. It was obvious that he didn’t understand the motive behind the release, if he did there’s every chance he wouldn’t have attacked them the way that he had, but that didn’t make this encounter any less terrifying.

Eventually, Sophie turned back to the Ghost, he was still stood there, expectantly with those burning purple eyes shifting, though unblinking, between her face and her father’s gun. He wasn’t afraid of the weapon, he’d all but bitten through Richards avenger which packed one hell of a wallop, but he was trying to assess if Sophie had plans to attempt to use it against him at all.

She lifted it, slowly, carefully turned away to show him the weapon before bending her knees and cautiously placing it on the floor between them. Perhaps, if she showed him submission he would show her mercy if things went south. Surely these creatures knew the notion of compassion… surely, they did. Her nerves were frayed so much so that she was still shaking as she rose again, not once taking her eyes from his though the tears had subsided thankfully, at least for now.

Showing the turian submission was one thing, she didn’t want to give him an excuse to attack her again, but showing weakness by crying in front of him was probably not a stellar move either.

Another moment passed between them, a thick deafening quiet with the pair of them simply staring at each other but there was one thing she had noticed within the Ghosts gaze. The steely glare, the fire she first saw burning inside his amethyst eyes had died, replaced instead with what Sophie could identify as mild curiosity.

She contemplated the expression for a while, having never dealt with or even met a live turian before she was unsure what to make of it. This one, this Ghost was, in no uncertain terms, fascinating. Compared to all the other turians she had dissected in her lab; this hulking beast was the first specimen of his kind she had ever encountered. He was enormous in comparison and with a charcoal carapace so oddly shaped and jutting out places no other turian did it wasn’t any wonder that the Hierarchy were using him as a tanking force. A Ghost was an odd choice of task, however, given that the majority of the Ghost operatives they had managed to pick off were much smaller and far nimbler. She wondered briefly if it was his sheer size that had him make use of the cloaking devices found on Ghost forces.

She thought about speaking again, to strike up a conversation as it seemed, from before, that he was able to understand the words she said. But the thought was fleeting and it died the moment the Ghost reached out with a clawed foot and plucked the gun from the space on the floor between them.

Sophie helplessly watched a little dismayed; not because the Ghost now had a weapon at his disposal but because that gun was one of the last things her father had ever given her before she left for Shanxi. Her one and only connection to home was now in the hands of an enemy and there was nothing she could do about it now.

The turian seemed to make a point of cocking the firearm without even looking at it, probably to give the impression that he had used them before, though there was little doubt the he had, but he performed either way before he motioned with a quick flick of his head that he wanted her to start walking.

She turned to face down the corridor, her hands still raised and her fingers twitching with nerves so frayed she feared she may just freeze to the spot; she almost did, her feet locking into place with the tile, that was until she felt the muzzle of her phalanx press into her spine.

The tables had turned, so suddenly in the past few minutes. She was now the prisoner and never before had she feared so vehemently for her life. Perhaps if she just obeyed his unspoken order she could find the rest of his troupe and he’d release her.

Somehow, she knew, deep down, that it simply wasn’t going to be that easy. 

* * *

She had no idea where to look for the last remaining prisoners in the facility. The Ghost was the only one that had been given a location that was common knowledge, which raised far more questions than it answered. As the pair of them walked cautiously down clinical corridors, eerily quiet now that the place had been evacuated.

But it seemed that the Ghost knew exactly where he was going, for the most part anyway. He didn’t speak – though neither did Sophie, there wasn’t much to say at this point – and only uttered the odd grunt and snuffed quite loudly through his nose from time to time. Occasionally he would halt and seemingly look around. Not that there was much to see, all the corridors here looked the same to her; long, white and a little spooky. But on these occasions, he would scrunch his nose a few times like he was sniffing the air and emit a long high-pitched whistle. His mouth didn’t open but his throat flexed as he did so.

It took a few times of him doing this, and he didn’t seem to care much that Sophie watched intently each time, that she realised that he was calling to the other turians in the facility. They must have been calling back as after the few seconds of intent listening he was ready to move again. After a while he was no longer grunting and motioning with the gun for her to move. He’d started offering a hand as though he was requesting her to lead the way and it was only when she would show resistance or hesitate that he would become irritable.

Eventually they came to a corrugated roller door reminiscent of a garage shutter, the Ghost was very interested in the door and placed his hands against the metal as if trying to find a way through the steel.

Sophie hadn’t realised it at first, but she didn’t recognise this part of the facility. The corridor here seemed much darker than the rest of the facility and there was a distinct whiff of acetone and harsh disinfectant in the air.

It didn’t take the Ghost long to figure out how the door worked. It was old, quite possible older than the facility itself given the amount of rust eating away the flaky green paint. He was already crouched with his fingers beneath the lip of the door and it seemed only right that Sophie do the same. Together they pulled the door upwards, the runner screaming against the force the pair of them applied to it (although Sophie was almost positive it was the Ghost doing most of the work) until what was inside that room, came clear to both of them.

She’d never entered this part of the facility before - never needed to – and it went without saying that she wished she was absolutely anywhere but here, but it was apparent that it had once been in use recently given the horrific sight before them both.

The place looked to have been ransacked and there was blood, both turian and human caking the floor and splattered up the walls. It hardly seemed real.

The lab wasn’t exactly spacious, it reminded her of her father’s garage back home on Earth; small, dark, pokey and with barely enough room to manoeuvre given the amount of equipment stored in here. Heart monitors, respirators and defibs; huge machines that were possibly older than she was were stacked in a corner though a simple monitor was set up next to a single gurney on the far side. A table had been smashed near the centre, an over turned bed frame and two chairs had been thrown into opposite corners of the room.

There were two bodies on the floor, one was turian – male given the crest protruding out of the back of his skull… or what was left of it. The gunshot to the temple had all but blown the rest of his head off, bits of his brain and bone were hanging out of the gaping wound though the bleeding had long stopped. This creature had been dead for hours it seemed. He lay sprawled on top of a man she recognised but didn’t know all too well; one of the so-called medics that worked here. It was becoming difficult to tell who were friends and foes in this awful game Pegasus were playing. He was dead too and barely recognisable given the deep lacerations on his face – he was missing an eye. It was possible he had simply bled out beneath the beast though it looked like the pair of them had put up a good fight until their deaths. 

There was blood everywhere, red and blue stains splattered across the room, some smeared together to form a disgusting shade of filthy purple. But even then, it wasn’t the two bodies on the floor that had caught both hers and her captor’s attention. 

The gurney at the far end of the room was the point of interest.

To get by her the Ghost had to push her further into the room but he was strangely gentle in doing so; placing a single three-digit hand carefully on her shoulder and then guiding her towards the centre as opposed to merely shoving her out of the way like she assumed he would.

Once they had reached the middle of the room, he left her there, his fingers slipping listlessly from her shoulder to visit the body on the bed. He seemed heavily distracted by it that he didn’t pay Sophie any mind as he left her in the centre of the room. The hand holding the gun hung limply at his side.

He approached the bed and stared down at the body lying there for what seemed like the longest time. He didn’t utter a sound and he didn’t attempt to touch it, he just stood there, mandibles twitching and those enormous shoulders slumped; defeated.

Sophie thought about running; to just bolt for the door and make a break for it. She found herself looking towards it, but her resolve dictated she stay but it was at the moment she turned back towards the turian that had led her here that the terror hit her again like a blow to gut.  

He was staring at her again, that hideous flame in his eyes burned as they had before and it turned her blood to ice. His gaze sliced through the dim light of the room like a blade, brimming with a rage that all but froze her to the spot. Her feet were no longer hers, just dead weights at the end of her legs. Even as he turned and stomped towards her, mandibles flared into that grotesque grin, with those needle like teeth glinting in the dirty light, she simply couldn’t find the will to run and merely attempted to shuffle away from him her arms raised in meek defence. He would catch her anyway if she bolted; she surmised that with the least resistance she showed him perhaps he would show her mercy.

“No, please! What are you doing? Don’t touch me! Y… you’re hurting me!” she stuttered, not knowing if he could even understand what she was saying as he grabbed her by the arm, yanked her much smaller body into his stone hard chest and pointed viciously with his free hand to the gurney.

He spoke, for the first time since they’d made contact but his voice was not pleasant as he all but screamed in her face causing her to whimper and wince while she desperately tried to turn away from him. She couldn’t understand him or that powerful screech he emitted.

“I-I don’t understand…” she started but was violently interrupted with a harsh shake of her arm as he lifted her almost completely off the floor.

He was terrifying, everything about these creatures were _absolutely terrifying_. It went without saying that she much preferred dealing with them when they were already dead.

The turian language was as violent as they were hostile. Words could literally only just be made out beneath the screech they emitted whenever they spoke and one had to listen damn hard to hear them. At first Sophie had assumed the screeching was the language itself, but the more she heard it, the more sounds she could pick out. But the noise was excessive and it was painful to her ears whenever this one tried to communicate. It reminded her of sharp nails being dragged across a chalk board.

He was holding her up by the arm, her shoulder twisted quite painfully as he shook her again to get a reaction and repeated whatever it was he’d said before with that awful tongue of his.

She felt the anger froth in her gut then, what could this creature possibly hope to gain by just screaming at her? She plucked up the courage from somewhere to spin her gaze back at him and all but spit her response, hitting him as hard as she could in the chest with the closed fist of her free hand. The strike caused her far more pain than him.

“I don’t understand what you’re saying, you _stupid fucking bird!_ ” her voice had morphed into a scream not dissimilar to the monster holding her up but nowhere near as loud.

It was then that she realised that he could understand everything she was saying and she instantly regretted her words but sheer stubbornness prevented her from looking away. There was no doubt in her mind that her derogatory comment had touched on a rather raw nerve. His bright eyes widened momentarily mimicking mild surprise and his grip on her arm loosened, if only slightly. Mere seconds passed as he seemed to process what he’d just heard before he hissed viciously at her, turned on his heel and dragged her by the arm to the gurney. He didn’t allow her purchase.

Sophie cried out in pain her feet slipping and legs flailing for purchase on the blood smeared tiles while he all but forced her to crawl at his side.

The Ghost repeated himself again, that same awful shriek as he whipped her body around his to face the gurney, forcefully shaking her arm, her body hanging above the frame while she clawed feebly at his hand wrapped firmly around her wrist. She grunted against the tears pooling in her eyes, squeezing them shut and he held her so high she had to stand on her tiptoes.

He wanted her to see it, to look at the corpse on the bed and when she eventually opened her eyes she realised she wasn’t looking at a corpse at all. The gasp that left her chest was so powerful she feared her lungs would simply implode. Sophie hadn’t been prepared for the horror of what she saw and the smell was so foul, so corrupted, _unclean_ that she could taste it in the back of her throat. It was all she could do to control her gag reflex.

The turian was female – no crest present but a higher sitting and more decorative fringe than the males – and she was alive, though barely. But even then she had enough about her to turn her head and slowly open her eyes. They were blue and they shimmered with so much sadness - shining gems in the dirt - and the pain she could see within them shook Sophie to her core.

She recognised her, her eyes, she’d seen those exact same eyes before.

So sad

Beautiful

Cobalt

This thing she was gazing at, this poor creature was the mother so distraught from the auditorium. It was all Sophie could do to keep her composure in front of her captor who had now released his hold, not that she had truly noticed at this point.

The female’s breathing was so laboured she could hear the blood gurgling in her throat with each struggling breath and she quivered so badly. But it was at this defining moment that she saw the bigger picture of what was happening.

The experiments… those _“tests”_ Dowell spoke of in the briefing the day previous had already started, and they had been happening in this very room.

 As she scanned the turian’s body, her fingers twitching in fright while she hovered her hands over the body not quite daring to touch, it all became clear, so much so the bile in her gut frothed in her throat that she had to fight to stop herself from retching.

The turian’s chest cavity was completely torn open, the front plates of her cowl were sitting on her thin stomach having been forcefully removed. Some of them had been broken off, the remaining shards protruding out of her skin like teeth making the gaping wound in her chest look like some horrid grotesque mouth. Her lungs, weakly inflating and deflating and her heart, pumping meekly were completely exposed amidst the ocean of blood pooled around her. There were tools; a scalpel and a pair of pincers, simply dropped into the wound, the steel glinting in the filthy light amidst the carnage.

The female was saturated, drenched in her own fluids and she was dying, so slowly and in unimaginable, quaking agony. The sight was nauseating and yet Sophie found she simply couldn’t look away no matter how much she wanted to. Distracted so much so the brunette hadn’t realised the huge alien behind her had released her from his monstrous grip and was now stood next to her gazing mournfully at what she could only assume was his friend. The dying female was, in no doubt, a member of his ground fleet. She could have been more than that, but it went without saying that the turian next to her knew the female lying on the blood-soaked gurney and was watching her losing her battle for life all thanks to the hands of humanity.

None of this made any sense, it didn’t add up and she found herself questioning, yet again, what project Pegasus could possibly gain from this and yet not wanting to know the answer. Her thoughts went briefly to Dowell then, to that horrifying blue infection corrupting his face.

Were these two things linked…?

_Why…?_

No wonder the turians hated them so much if this was what they were doing to them. No one deserved to be treated this way, not even a prisoner of war.

It was then that she had a second glance around the room and took stock of her surroundings in an attempt to settle her frazzled, unfocused mind. There were jars filled with blue fluids, syringes and test tubes littered about the lab. There was no order to it, like the place had been thrown together in a matter of only a few hours. Hell, that could even be true… Her co-workers… her _friends_ and _allies_ had been experimenting on and murdering these people. It had seemed the scientist laying beneath the male on the floor had been a victim of retaliation to what was happening to the female dying on her blood-soaked bed. And rightly so.

She had the startling epiphany that this Ghost had every right to feel the way he did. He had the right to scream and make his foreign demands even if his hostage didn’t understand them. Were the boot on the other foot… would she react the exact same way?

Damn right she would. Hell, she would have killed him long before now were the roles reversed. She had to commend him for his self-discipline in that regard.

This facility had brutally executed every one of his team, had displayed them to Project Pegasus like circus animals and now he had to stand there and watch the last member die in such a vile, needless way.

The thought made her sick to her stomach. Dissecting the dead was one thing but actually bringing them here alive and torturing them was something else entirely. Nothing good ever came from mutilating living creatures… nothing.

She would not be affiliated with this. She was no murderer…

This was too heavy, she had to get away.

Sophie’s gaze was drawn back to the dying turian beneath her who was still gazing at her with those cat like sky blue eyes. She didn’t know why, there was no prompt behind the action other than sorrow, but she reached out and touched the hard shell of the females face, a tender motion that seemed welcomed as the turian closed her eyes and seemed to lean into her touch. The scale wasn’t hard like she’d first imagined it would be, there was a softness to it that reminded Sophie of those velvet coated toys she’d had as a child. It was a strange sensation beneath her fingers but a sensation that made this moment all the more real. A thing of horror, of nightmares.

“Look what they’ve done to you. I’m so sorry… I’m so sorry…” Sophie’s voice was all but a whisper when she noticed the hulking male beside her was watching intently. She turned towards him, noticing his vivid eyes following her every move. The way the shell sat on their brow made these creatures look constantly fierce though she was certain the eyes were not how the turians conveyed their unspoken emotions. The mandibles on the sides of his face flickered lightly and he raised his head as though he was awaiting an answer for a question he hadn’t asked. (though if he did Sophie wouldn’t be able to understand him anyway.)

Slowly she allowed her eyes to drift back to the female while carefully piecing together what it was he wanted to convey to her with that simple glimmer of hope in his violet gaze.

He thought she could help her.

She couldn’t…

Allowing her hand to fall from the turians cheek and taking a wary step back from the gurney, Sophie shook her head grimly.

“I’m so sorry… I… I can’t… I’m sorry,” was all she could muster in little more than a whimper, wringing her hands nervously as the bile forced its way back into her gullet and the tears pooled in her eyes.

She saw him crumple before her very eyes and it was strange to see a turian so vulnerable. She had been led to believe that the avian creatures were monsters hellbent on distinguishing the human race. Just ‘things’ that needed quelling.

They were just people trying to survive like anyone else. Soldiers following orders. They didn’t deserve this, no one did.  The turians were already dwindling in numbers, hundreds of them being extracted from the colony every day, with no food compatible with their biology they were beginning to starve in the field. This discovery added insult to injury.

Sophie didn’t understand the details of the war, hadn’t really tried to which was a failing on her part. But what she could see right here right now, was a man grieving for his fallen comrade that he simply could not save. Watching him looking at her made Sophie ache in places she’d long forgotten existed, places she didn’t want to recall.

Eventually, seemingly realising the inevitable, the Ghost moved from his current position to the head of the bed enticing Sophie to move further back into the room. He leaned over and seemed to rest his forehead on the females, they uttered strange sounds between them; not the abhorrent screech they called a language but something reminiscent of birds twittering in the trees back on Earth. Sweet, loving and tender, everything a turian simply hadn’t been, couldn’t be in Sophie’s mind.

There was a moment between them, at least by what Sophie could see as the female lifted a frail hand and pawed at the Ghost’s face so tenderly, their bird song tinkling in the filth of the laboratory light. Were the turian people truly vicious monsters? It certainly didn’t look that way from this vantage point as this single human, a victim of a circumstance she felt she had placed herself in, watched in awe as these two _monsters_ sang to each other. The most touching song if she’d ever heard one. 

They were saying goodbye…

Eventually he lifted the pistol, slowly at first as he pulled himself away from the female on the bed. Her arm fell back to the dirty mattress and she looked away as he pressed the gun to her temple and pulled the trigger.

The sound of the pistol firing reverberated against the metal of the makeshift lab. A deafening noise that made the woman flinch where she stood, catching her breath when she realised that sound she could now hear wasn’t the tweeting of little birds, but the ringing in her ears from her father’s gun.

He’d killed her, a mercy in this case. There was nothing else to be done lest she be left to die a slow agonising death.

This way was better for her.

Yes… this way was better.

At least now she could be with her boy. At least now she wasn’t hurting anymore.

Seconds passed like centuries and the Ghost simply stood there, head lowered over the life he’d taken only seconds ago. His mandibles twitched outwards in rhythm to the strange chirping sounds she could hear coming from his direction.

_Was he… weeping?_

There was emotion there, raw, painful and so powerful it was tangible in the room and so very _human_ to her. The wrong term, of course, but it was something she recognised and could relate to in more ways than one. He’d just done the unthinkable, he’d killed one of his own, despite whether or not that was to save her from any more suffering forced upon her by humanity, he’d pulled that trigger. She was dead and ultimately that was because of him.

She couldn’t relate to that.

She couldn’t relate at all and the thought made her feel superficial and hollow. It certainly wasn’t a nice feeling as the room suddenly became much smaller and so very cold. So much so that she instinctively pulled her arms close and folded them tightly across her chest. 

Eventually he turned towards her, the rage in his eyes had gone and he looked at her sideways on with a seemingly soft manner as he blinked those violet eyes so very slowly. Sophie stared back unmoving and unsure of how she was supposed to be feeling after witnessing something so savage and yet so merciful all at the same time.

The chirping had stopped and the pair of them simply stood in this chamber of horror together, staring at one another and not knowing what to do next. Never before had Sophie been so unsure of herself.

But this was the first time since this nightmare began to unfurl and shape the rest of her life as she knew it that she realised that she was looking back at this turian, this huge behemoth of a creature without fear. There was none to be had and it dawned on her then that her perception of these people had evolved and they were just that; people.

The eye contact didn’t last, as Sophie struggled to even hold up her head and lowered her gaze to the filthy tiles beneath her.

She didn’t recall the motion but she was now sat on the floor now amidst the carnage in the room but she didn’t much care anymore. Her fragile mind had had about as much as it could take over the past couple of days. It was true to say that would has been seen cannot be unseen but how she wished her memory would blot out the last twenty-four hours.

Perhaps one day, when in therapy no doubt, she would be able to suppress it and push it into the archives of her memory never to be looked at again.

Vacantly she lifted her head to see the Ghost standing over her, her father’s gun still at his side and she made no bid to move when he cautiously lowered himself down and sat in front of her.

He stretched a hand out to her and twisted it to reveal his own version of her omni-tool illuminating around his forearm. The tool looked a little more refined than hers, a little more advanced and a little smoother around the edges, but the basic shape was the same, it was a little baffling that these creatures had equipment so similar to humans but she had little time to question it. Sophie frowned down at it before glancing up at the turian sat opposite as he pointed at the tool on his arm and gave her a beckoning signal with the other hand. He wanted to see hers, for what reason was unclear but his expression was still soft, still mournful and his eyes lacked the fire she’d seen in them before.

She didn’t argue with him and simply activated her own tool on her arm as the Ghost took hold of it in his massive hands, so gently, so very gently, and scanned it with his own. A few uncertain seconds went by with him holding her hand and flicking through menu’s on her device before his eyes connected with hers again, that very same tremor from before went through her as he did so, that same jarring jolt of dread as he lifted both hands and pressed the flat of each palm over her ears.

He opened his mouth, that dragon’s maw of his and began to speak in that awful abhorrent shriek which had her wince and attempt to recoil from him, a movement he prevented with his strong hands. There was no where to go so she sat and she endured it with her eyes squeezed shut until gradually the shriek died and a voice, flanged but so smooth dominated the room. A voice, so calm with a hue of sadness about it that spoke in a language she could suddenly understand forced her to open her eyes and stare in awe at its owner.

 “… and so let the spirits guide me home, fore my will is not forsaken and I will die for my cause. Victory at all costs.” He blinked at her as he finished what he was saying. It sounded like the end of a prayer and suddenly she wasn’t looking at a _thing_ anymore, she was looking at a person and the sensation that realisation brought to her was far more alien than he was. But it was then that she realised what had just happened. He had activated a translator device on her omni-tool she never knew she had.

“Do you understand me now?” he asked softly, so very softly in that gorgeous dual voice, so smooth, so deep, so very very strange.

Sophie nodded briskly just as the turian slipped his hands from her around her head, her hair falling about her shoulders as he did so.

He gave a single nod as he shifted his body on the tiled floor and he fixed her with those shocking eyes of his though now Sophie struggled to come to terms with the fact that they belonged to a creature that could speak so beautifully.

“Just so you’re aware, although I’m sure you’ve already figured this one out. I’m not here to make friends with humans.” He spoke softly but without feeling; deadpan in that strange, smooth voice, as he pulled the pistol from his side and pointed it directly at her.

Sophie stared down the barrel for the longest time as her flesh tightened around her. She hadn’t forgotten that he had a gun, hadn’t forgotten that he knew how to use it. But this was the first time he’d stuck the thing in her face.

 “And it’s important to take note, human, that I am the one holding the gun. On your feet.” His voice didn’t alter an octave, but his mannerism screamed dominance. This creature in front of her was dangerous, not that Sophie didn’t already respect that about him. He had already tried to kill her and her friend once today. But it wasn’t until now that the fear truly started to creep into her veins. Being able to understand the words he spoke did not ease her caution, if anything it forced her to realise it.

“You’re just going to execute me, now? You should have finished the job back in sector three.” She stated flatly, raising both hands in surrender as she cautiously got to her feet. She was unarmed and with no means of defence, the turian was pointing her own weapon at her; if he was going to kill her, he was going to do it now. She just prayed that he made it quick.

She heard him hum, a sound that was reminiscent of a chuckle and she could only assume that was what it was before the Ghost started to speak again.

“Why bother to fix your translator if I’m just going to kill you, hm? Call me a _stupid fucking bird_ again, however… and I may reconsider.” He tilted his head as though to drive the threat home. It worked. Sophie lowered her gaze to the space between them, embarrassed that she’d allowed herself to use such a bigoted racial slur. Needless to say that she wouldn’t be using it again be that in the heat of the moment or not. The shame was fleeting as the Ghosts voice derailed that train of thought.

“I need to get to my extraction point. You know Shanxi much better than I do so I need you to get me there in one piece.”

“And if I refuse?”

“Then by all means…” he turned towards the bodies in the room, a mangled mess of limbs, bone and blood, and presented them to her with the pistol. “… you’re welcome to join your friends, and mine.”

There was an edge of humour in his tone that made her feel uneasy, which she supposed was the desired effect. She didn’t want to die, her survival instinct demanded she didn’t and the turian damn well knew it. At least not this way, with no dignity and by the hand of a turian no less.

“The Alliance will come looking for me…”

“I don’t doubt that.”

The silence in the room was nuclear. She knew she didn’t have much choice but to follow his orders lest she wanted to die along with the rest of her co-workers. But there was the underlying issue that project Pegasus was a lie, a tumour in the centre of the Alliance, that they were bringing living people into the facility and dismembering them for an unknown gain. The project was corrupted, the Alliance needed to know about it and she was the one who had to tell them.

Naively she hoped this complex was the only one, a bud already nipped, but rooted deep on the back of her mind was the thought that project Pegasus was much more than what it now seemed on the surface. If not stopped project Pegasus was at risk of growing a few extra heads.

The Alliance were not famous for their listening skills however, liked criticisms even less. Even Sophie knew they liked to brush certain matters under the carpet and there was no doubt in her mind that someone had given the order for this torture chamber to be set up and utilised. There was every chance that the Alliance would attempt to cover this up as much as they had all the other controversies over the years.

Perhaps helping the turian would drive the message home a little harder.

“I’ll help you…” Sophie started noting how the Ghost gave her a quizzical glare when she began to lower her surrendering hands. “… but not because you’re threatening to kill me. I have a story to tell and you’re going to help me tell it.”

He laughed, a hearty guffaw that forced his body forward both mandibles flaring comically. “You’re making demands of _me_?”

“Why is that funny?”

“Who’s the one holding the gun?”

“Who’s the map to get you back to Palaven?”

He paused then, mandibles dropping low and the plates of his brow raising as though caught out, though that wasn’t wrong to assume.

“You’re right, I know Shanxi quite well, and I’ll need co-ordinates but I’ve no doubt that I can get you to your extraction point. I also know where there is a downed turian supply ship nearby we haven’t gotten around to raiding yet...”

He was glaring at her now, if turians had short and curlys (which Sophie was quite certain they didn’t…) then she had her hands twisted firmly within them and they both damn well knew it.

“… kill me and the Alliance will find you long before you even figure out where you’re going. And if they don’t kill you you’ll die of exposure or starvation long before your drop ship arrives. Just how much do you really want to get home?”

He seemed to contemplate the offer, a single mandible inched outwards while he continued to stare at her from beneath his dark heavy brow line. Though his relent came rather quickly with a sigh.

“You drive a hard bargain, human, but first you can help me find some clothes. I’m starting to feel self-conscious.” the turian shrugged in response, though Sophie was a little concerned that she hadn’t noticed before now that the alien had been naked all along. He was accepting the deal which would bode well for the both of them in the long run. Though Sophie was quite certain the promise of nourishment was what sealed the deal in the first place. Lucky for her that the downed turian supply ship was not a lie.

She watched as he strolled past her, back towards the door in which they came. Their next move would be to obtain a vehicle and she was more than sure a Mako tank was sitting idle in the facilities garage area.

“My name is Sophie, by the way,” she bit out, there was no way she could handle more than a day of simply being known as _human_. “If we’re going to be travelling together for a while I feel I should at least know yours.”

The turian halted at the doorway and turned only enough to look her over out of the corner of his eye.

“Ghost.” Was his only response.


	3. Titan

_Victory at any cost; the motto had lost all meaning. Here there was no victory, here one could only mate with death and death liked it rough._

_The ground was nothing but sludge, the night air filthy with the thick stench of the storm._

_It was raining hard, and gaining a footing on the odd surface was tougher than it should have been. Stomachs growling in the background were not helping matters, and it was all Davix could do to not think about where his next meal would come from._

_His entire team hadn’t eaten for almost five days. It was slow but death was inevitable; by the end of the week, they would all be dead if they didn’t find something soon to fill their bellies. How could the Hierarchy not know this place was inhabitable for dextro species? They were starving—their men were dying and still they refused to leave._

_It made no sense. The humans had won, let them have their vile little rock. Why were they still here attempting to occupy it? It was of no use to the Hierarchy anyway._

_The drop-ship with the supplies they so desperately needed had been intercepted and shot down by those disgusting little flesh demons some days ago – humans, how he hated them – and slowly but surely the entire troupe was starving to death. The smoke from the felled ship could still be seen over the canopy, they needed to get to it, and quickly. With any luck, not all the supplies would be destroyed; any salvage was better than nothing._

_It was the boy who concerned Davix the most. He was waning fast and needed to be carried almost constantly; his legs now too weak to hold his own weight. Ruban was young, too young to be sent into battle; at only fifteen, his time with the Hierarchy had only just begun. With a nervous disposition and little confidence to play with, the Hierarchy thought best he be stationed with his mother, Chrysa, to help with the boost as he settled into military life. Not one of their best decisions, it had to be said. He was so thin, and was beginning to develop a nasty cough that was visibly painful on his chest. They needed off this planet sooner rather than later—but it seemed General Arterius knew better._

_General Arterius always knew fucking better. Spirits damn him. Damn him for condemning them all to death._

_Communication with Arterius and the rest of the turian ground fleet had gone silent. It seemed they had either moved too far away for proper communication or they were just being ignored. The latter seemed most likely. Waifs and strays would be the least of the Hierarchy’s concerns. Davix had long made peace with the fact that the best he could hope for would to be accidentally found. The extraction point at Lykan’s View was too far to reach on foot. No one was coming for them. They didn’t matter enough; his troupe were forsaken._

_The ghost operative moved his team through the thicket, thick mud squelching between armoured toes, rain pelting him in the eyes, as he attempted in vain to keep his wits about him. It was hard, so very hard; he was tired, so tired. And he was hungry, so very hungry. The pain in his guts each time his body cried out for nourishment was almost enough to send him to his knees – there were moments he had to grimace just to endure the agony – he knew the rest of his squad were feeling it too._

_The original team was made up of almost twenty men and women, excluding young Ruban. Now only five remained including the boy, the rest destroyed by the hands of humanity or emaciated by Shanxi’s cruel wrath. He couldn’t save them and left them where they lay, wasting into the poisonous soil of this death trap the humans called a colony._

_The objective of this excursion was simple—raid the fallen supply shuttle, set up base, and pray for contact. Quite simple, quite quick._

_It was the scout he’d sent ahead that gave them away._

_By the time Davix had reached Achris he was already dead; face down in the mud while the humans who had killed him stood over his body like the poachers they were. Weapons at the ready, the turian troupe were outnumbered only by two to one, still enough to force them to their knees. Davix surrendered his pheaston; jammed and waterlogged, the rifle was more use as a club than a gun but it was his regardless, and he begrudgingly gave it up, as did the others._

_There was nowhere else to go, they were too weak to fight, and he was so tired of hiding._

_“By the spirits, make it quick. I cannot bear it any more…” Davix’s prayer was unheard as he bowed before his captors—hands behind his head—and pressed his brow into the mud. There were no spirits here on Shanxi, only rain, sludge, and humans—the latter being the cruellest of all elements._

_Here they were forsaken. Here they would meet their end._

_What Davix wouldn’t give to just speak with his sister for one moment, to just see her one last time._

* * *

_The room was freezing, and Davix could withstand temperatures much lower than the average turian, but soaked to the bone, stripped bare, and slowly dying—it was a wonder her could feel anything at all. Even so, the hard blow to the side of the head still came as a shock and he grunted with pain. The impact made his entire body jolt to one side, his head bouncing off the body of the vehicle he was secured to. He could taste the blood on his tongue and he listlessly licked the corners of his mouth as the leading human of this group was trying to gather information from him._

_“Tell me where it is!”_

_That had to be the fourth time the small man had screamed that in his face._

_“I keep telling you,” Davix repeated sluggishly,_ _his head throbbing and his body aching so desperately for food. “I don’t know anything about any artifact_ _. We’re just scavengers…”_

_It wasn’t the answer the human wanted, and Davix was rewarded with yet another slap about the face with the butt of the man’s rifle. His vision blurred this time, and Davix emitted a low whine in response to the new sharp throbbing in his jaw._

_“Not what I wanted to hear, birdy,” the man hissed. His eyes were crazy, the expression of a madman even Davix could see, and he was by no means an expert on humans._

_“Stop it!” That was Rhappi he could hear – Davix’s second in command, he was a little hot headed at times but a damn good leader. He would have lost him mind long before now were it not for Rhappi’s council in such a difficult time. “What’s smacking him in the head going to do? We-Don’t-Know-Anything!”_

_Davix opened his mouth to tell him to keep quiet, not to put himself in the firing line but the human handling him forced Rhappi into a chair and rapped him in the back of the head with the butt of his own gun. The force was so strong that Rhappi was out cold. Davix didn’t know that would be the last time he would hear him speak. The next time Davix would see his second in command, he would be laying on top of a human scientist with his brains splattered across a filthy tiled floor._

_Lowering his gaze Davix spat a globule of spittle and blood onto the hard floor between his legs, not bothering to even look back up at the man to reiterate what Rhappi had just told them, “I can’t give you information I don’t have.”_

_The man crouched and shoved his face into Davix’s, causing him to recoil and hit the horns on his head against the wheel of the tank he was currently strapped to._

_“You’re a fucking liar, all you skull-faces are fucking liars!” the man scowled, baring_ _his teeth. Dowell was his name, according to the rest of his men. He was mean looking, mean and ugly and that was saying something considering just how ugly and fleshy this race was in general. They reminded Davix of the Batarian people—they were ugly too._

_“How so?” Davix responded coolly. The man had been ranting and raving at him about this artefact for what seemed like a thousand years, and each and every time Davix or any other member of his dwindling team informed him they didn’t know anything, he grew violent. But it was Davix he was the most interested in, that much was obvious.  The ghost operative didn’t quite understand why, until now._

_“You’re one of those titans Arterius keeps banging on about. I know… you think I don’t, but I do,” he laughed, a maniacal chuckle that only accentuated the insanity already glowing in his eyes. “Look at the size of you. You’re a freak, of course you’re one of them.”_

_That statement was so heavy that Davix was having trouble focusing on any one part of it, and he sat there on the freezing cold floor puzzling over what in the galaxy this guy was talking about._

_“Titan…?” he asked the question mostly to himself to fathom the term and where he’d heard it before now. “…titan’s… they’re not real. An old story from a dead religion… I’m not… titan?” he couldn’t even continue with whatever it was he was trying to say, the fact that a human had mentioned it at all and accused him of being a titan of Palaven had all but blown his mind._

_His hunger addled brain vaguely recalled the mention of General Arterius, and suddenly the focus lay purely on that part of Dowell’s statement. “Wait… you’ve spoken to Arterius? Is he here? Can we speak to him?”_

_Stupid question and one he would never gain an answer to as the man, already on his feet, wandered over to the boy sitting in a chair on the opposite side of the room. He was being held down by two other humans on either side, not that that was really necessary; Ruban was so weak he struggled to hold his own head up._

_“What are you doing?” Again, Davix was asking questions he had no hope of gaining answers to, not that he needed one this time. They were going to hurt him, they were going to use Ruban as a bargaining chip to attempt to drag the information they wanted from Davix, information he simply didn’t have._

_“No! No, leave him alone, please, he’s just a boy! He’s done nothing to anyone! Ruban!” Chrysa was screaming on the other side of the garage. She was tethered to another human, a crude rope wrapped around her neck; she was on her knees, begging, pleading, crying for the men not to hurt her son as the two holding him to the chair yanked his head back by the horns. Ruban began keening, a sharp - albeit strangled – cry, as the humans forced his mouth open with their small, filthy hands._

_“Davix! Davix, make them stop! Tell them what they want, please! Ruban! They’re going to hurt Ruban! They’re going to kill my boy, Davix, please!” Chrysa was desperate, but Davix didn’t know what to do. He didn’t have what they wanted. The troupe were no longer a force of turian soldiers—they were scavengers, abandoned by their own, trying to survive on an inhospitable planet, and failing miserably at that._

_He watched in disbelief that they would do this, that they would use that poor, defenceless, starving boy as a weapon to get results. In this case, it was more than likely a false one. Davix struggled against the binds that tied him, succeeding only in having the cord dig further into the flesh around his wrists._

_“I don’t know what they want!” He cried back, the panic frothing in his gut just as Dowell turned back towards him, doing that thing that humans do when they bear their teeth. Was it aggressive? Was it something else? He didn’t know, but he was quite certain in this case it was the former._

_“What I want is quite simple. Just the artifact, **Davix**.” The use of his name from a human mouth disgusted him far more than it should have. He spoke it like a slur, like the word itself offended him.  Despite the vicious glare the turian shot at Dowell, he still had nothing to say. He didn’t have what he wanted and it would be Ruban that ultimately paid the price for that, but he simply couldn’t handle hearing the boy keen anymore._

_“Stop it! He’s just a kid, let him go!” Davix eventually called, his voice booming in the darkness of the garage. It was enough to divert the attention of every human in the room toward him. “You wouldn’t seriously hurt a sick child like this for a stupid artifact, come on! I thought humans had a little more dignity than that!”_

_He was attempting to appeal to Dowell’s better nature. Ruban was ill, dangerously so; would they seriously cause him more harm?_

_The ugly man once again crouched in front of him and did that thing with his mouth, his eyes glinting with an insane excitement._

_“What is it you ugly fuckers say?” Dowell tapped a finger on his chin and pretended to be deep in thought for a moment. He was goading him, knowing he was trapped, knowing he couldn’t fight back and crush his skull in his hands like he so desperately wanted to._

_“Ah! Yes, I remember. Victory at any cost.”_

_Davix felt his eyes widen, his stomach dropping into his bowels as Dowell got to his feet and gave the order to the men holding Ruban in his chair. The last thing Davix could remember was Chrysa’s cries as those men drove filth down her boy’s throat._

* * *

It was a waking nightmare, and the episode had hit him again like a blow to gut the moment he’d walked back into that garage. The stain from where he’d spat out his own blood was still there on the floor, and it was all Davix could do to simply stand there and stare at that one spot. The chairs the rest of his team were sat in were strewn about the area and they thought Davix surrendered—his false admittance to being one of these fabled titans had sealed their fate.

It was his fault they were dead.

It was his fault they all met their end so horribly.

He should have encountered his demise along with them.

Davix could still hear Ruban’s cries, could still hear Chrysa begging the men to show her poor boy mercy. He would have been dead within days anyway and his last hours here were excruciating and filled with unadulterated terror. The thought sat rotting in Davix’s gut. A feeling so palpable he habitually lifted a hand and rubbed the flat of his palm across his empty belly.

They were all dead all thanks to his leadership ‘skills.’ What kind of commanding officer was he if he couldn’t keep his men from falling into enemy hands? What kind of commanding officer allows his ground force to slowly starve to death?

Ruban had ultimately been his responsibility—training him, coaching him, taking him under his wing, and showing him that confidence grows like a weed if given the right encouragement. Davix was a prime example of how a person can change and grow into one’s own skin.

He’d never have that chance now, and it was that thought that caused him to lean back against the wall and close his eyes with a despondent sigh. At least Chrysa was with him, wherever they went when a turian died. She was there with him, and they weren’t suffering anymore. Yet he feared their last conversation would haunt him forever more.

_“Chrysa, I’m so sorry… I’m so sorry, I don’t know how to help you, I don’t know what to do… Tell me what to do.”_

_“Let me go…”_

_“Chrysa… I can’t do this on my own… I need you.”_

_“Look at me, I’m done, Davix. Let me go, let me be with my boy. May the spirits be kinder to you than they were to us. Please, it hurts so much, let me go…”_

That gunshot still resounded in his head each time he thought back to that castle of horrors. How he wished it was him torn to pieces on that bed and not her. She’d had a family and It would be him that faced her bond mate and the rest of her children when he returned to Palaven—if he ever returned. That glimmer of hope continued to flicker and wane, even now. It went without saying that he had little faith in the female human’s guidance, but he was left with no choice in the matter.

He knew the human was there with him somewhere - that small thing with the hair - the one he’d tried to throttle when she had released him from his tiny prison. There had been another with her, but being so blinded by sheer panic and rage, Davix struggled to recall what happened to him. Maybe he’d killed him; he wasn’t sure.

This one, however, had wanted to help—apparently—but he wasn’t so sure, at least not right now. She had assured him all the humans had been evacuated, and having not come across a single one other than this _Sophie_ after his initial release, it was safe to say that she was telling the truth about that much.

Before they’d dragged him to that pokey room. It had all started here with him tied to the wheel of this primitive tank. The mere sight of it made him feel nauseous, but it was a simple case of _put up and shut up_ if he was going to get to where he needed to be. The female said it would take the better part of a week to get to his extraction point, and that was if they got moving right away.

This journey was going to be a long one—he could feel it in his bones.

Davix didn’t have to open his eyes to know that Sophie was staring at him from the other side of the tank, and he spoke unprompted.

“Do you know how to drive this thing?” His question was simple and delivered without hostility. Even he knew one attracted more insects with sweets.

She seemed to hesitate with her answer and it wasn’t until Davix lifted his head and fixed her with his gaze that she was spurred into action, her demeanour becoming rather animated with a sharp shake of her head.

Sophie was afraid of him but this certainly wasn’t a bad thing. The more afraid she was perhaps would complement her obedience on this little outing of theirs. He couldn’t say that he was at all thrilled about having a human travelling companion, but there was no way he would be able to navigate Shanxi by himself. The grisly deaths of his entire troupe were painful evidence of that.

“Uh… n-no. I’ve never even rode in a Mako before.”

“How long has it been standing?” Davix was thinking mainly of the fuel and the oil required to make these things run. He couldn’t tell just by looking at it, but he was quite certain this vehicle didn’t have an eezo core like most turian crafts. It was a box of a thing, a little dusty and a little dirty and in need of some tender loving care. Nothing the ground commander couldn’t handle if the thing didn’t want to start. But he could very well do without cleaning engine parts of solid lumps of oil if it had been sitting there since the dawn of time.

“I-I don’t know. It was already here when we occupied the building,” Sophie said.

Davix snuffed, a hard exhale through his nose as he glanced over the tank once more. He’d seen similar vehicles on Palaven, had repaired them to a working state no less, but the work was rough, heavy, and messy.

It was with a soft grunt as he pushed himself away from the wall that he sauntered towards the tank, relieved to know that the door opened with ease. At least he wouldn’t have to waste precious energy trying to break into the thing.

“I better see if she still works…” the comment was delivered mostly to himself than to the human still standing on the opposite side of the garage.

It went without saying that the sooner he was on the road, the better.

* * *

There was no key for the tank but it seemed that Ghost was quite the mechanic, either that or a master thief who specialised in stealing military vehicles. Sophie never even knew a tank could be hot-wired. Either way, he popped the hood and managed it in a matter of seconds. The engine roared to life, and before she really realised it, the pair of them were on their way out of Mt. Myka.

There was a sadness about this shift in events, the end of an era. She had worked so damn hard at her lab in Mt. Myka. All of those hours of research, the all-nighters she’d pulled only for it all to be thrown back at her. Sophie had invested so much of herself into project Pegasus and she’d thrown it all away. But a decision had been made and Sophie would be damned if she went back on her word now.

Still, she looked back as the facility disappeared out of view, deep into the thicket of dense trees. Sophie would never see that place again, and yet it was that place that had set her on the course that it had. This was her life now, a prisoner of this creature seated next to her, driving a human tank. A glorified tour guide.

If she’d have been told a couple of days ago that she would be helping a turian prisoner escape a research centre, she would have laid down and died of laughter. It was funny how life had this knack for spinning reality on its head.

Their first port of call was the turian supply ship located northwest to the facility; it took about an hour to reach it. Sophie was expecting a vast wreckage, but what she found as both she and Ghost exited the tank was nothing more than a small shuttle craft crumpled into a felled tree. She knew the craft was here, had recalled when the soldiers had shot it down not seven days ago. For reasons unknown, the craft had never been raided as they usually were and was just left here to fester.

There was little to no conversation between her and Ghost; there was none to be had as it seemed he knew where this drop ship was already and wasted little time getting them there. Sophie was merely the tour guide to get him to the extraction point, a small pinnacle on the edge of Shanxi’s map known to her as Lycan’s View.

Lycan’s View was quite a distance away, right on the other end of the colony. When the question was asked and she’d informed Ghost that it could take the best part of a week to reach it (and that didn’t include rest-stops and the fact that they would have to travel incognito, which meant avoiding  the multitude of human settlements) he didn’t seem all too impressed. It wasn’t exactly her idea of a wholesome road trip, to say the very least.

It seemed strange that Lycan’s View was the only place his people could collect him from. It was a difficult place to reach; lots of mountains, lakes, rivers, and canyons between them and their destination. The ride was going to be a bumpy one, of that Sophie had very little doubt.

“How did you know this was here?” Sophie asked out of genuine curiosity. She was aware that she had so graciously informed him of the crafts existence but not its location. She was rewarded with what she assumed was a blank stare as Ghost made his way around his side of the tank and began to saunter towards the craft.

“I was on my way here when your _friends_ apprehended my squad.” His response was little more than a drone against the breeze and his statement brought an unpleasant chill to her flesh. Sophie recalled Dowell stating that five turians had been captured but that they’d been on their way to infiltrate Mt. Myka. The facts were that they’d simply being trying to survive. Everything she’d been told back at the facility had been a lie. Sophie already knew this, but the confirmation received from the turian leading that operation was quite difficult to hear.

Even considering this grisly information, how was she ever going to get used to his voice? She was aware turians had dual vocal chords but she was quite surprised upon hearing him speak her language that turians would use both at the same time. Or perhaps they didn’t, and the flanged effect she could hear was actually something else. Turians were truly fascinating, what she wouldn’t give to ask all of the questions she’d so religiously logged in her ledger. But for one, the ledger was back at the facility so there was little chance of being able to just go back and pick it up, and for two, Ghost didn’t seem like the friendly type. She doubted very much that he would appreciate being verbally poked and prodded by a human. The way he looked at her - like a rotten vegetable he’d just found in his pantry - was as good of proof as any that he wasn’t keen on her at all.

She followed him into the craft; Ghost didn’t object and actually held up part of the shuttle’s frame to allow her to enter. He was gentle as he did so, even placing a hand on the small of her back to balance her when she slipped on the spilled cargo. The craft was tiny compared to what she was expecting, it was any wonder the thing even survived at all.

There was stuff everywhere; bits of metal and packets of—what she could only assume—was food with strange writing on the packaging and the stink of melted plastic and ammonia hung heavily in the air. The smell was so strong Sophie could almost taste it as she picked her way through the wreckage. She briefly glanced into the cockpit at the head of the shuttle but didn’t enter—the stench of rotten flesh hitting the back of her throat. The pilot sat still in her seat, dead for quite some time. Sophie thought it best not to draw any attention to the deceased turian at the helm, and quietly made her way back into the body of the tiny ship.

She heard wrappers tearing and her attention diverted to the noise on the far side of the craft. The inside of the wrecked shuttle was dark, but a halo of light shrouded Ghost as he sat on the floor ripping open anything he could find, and literally shoving it down his throat. The noise he made was revolting as he swallowed his food whole, but Sophie declined to comment.

The turian was literally starving, another few days with nothing in his belly and he would have become dangerously ill. Who was she to make judgements on his eating habits?

Turning away from Ghost - who was still devouring anything within reach – Sophie continued to kick at the bits and pieces at her feet until she found what looked like vacuum-sealed packets of individual fish. It still looked fresh on closer inspection and Sophie turned the packets over in her hands a couple of times as though to confirm this before stuffing them in the backpack she’d found shoved under her seat back in the tank.

It was during this shuffling through debris – and finding little else other than fish – that she found a bottle filled with a deep purple liquid. It was just propped up against the hull of the craft opposite to where she was currently crouched.

She could still hear Ghost wolfing food down his gullet as she reached for the bottle and plucked it from the wreckage. Briefly she wondered if the translator Ghost had activated on her omni tool worked on text. There was certainly no harm in trying and Sophie wasted little time activating her tool and scanning the bottle. It wasn’t a complete loss; though most of the text was still garbled and nonsensical; on her device screen, the word ‘ _BRANDY_ ’ popped up more than once.

It was safe to say that the bottle was some kind of turian alcoholic beverage. She popped it in her backpack with the intention of using it as a disinfectant. It never hurt to be prepared, just in case.

Ghost had eaten his fill, had laden his own thick arms with as many packets as he could carry, and the pair silently made their wayback to the tank. The quiet was uncomfortable, an ominous atmosphere that could be tipped off balance at any given moment with a wrong look or misspoken word. Sophie was quite adamant as they both settled back into their seats, and she shoved the pack back under hers, that it wouldn’t be her that broke that delicate balance.

She wasn’t sure how long they’d been driving until she fell asleep.

* * *

_It was touching her, the darkness, it’s hands as cold as ice. She could feel it inside of her, squirrelling through her guts, trying to take her piece by piece as she ran, ran for her life through the shadows of the dead. They called for her, beckoned for her soul to join them. They tried to touch her, grab her, pull her in—but she ran. She ran through burnt trees, her feet kicking at the filthy ground in a slow escape. It was like running through treacle, and she could barely breathe. Her lungs struggled to take in the air; it hung around her thick and wet like cotton._

_But then she saw him, that boy, so small and crumpled, crying - no, sobbing - on the ground. Sophie ran to him, as fast as her legs would allow, she ran and ran and ran, getting no closer, the young turian seemingly getting further away as she reached for him, his pained cries reverberating inside of her, shattering her bones, quaking beneath her skin._

_And then he was there, towering above her, all scales and teeth as that gigantic maw unfolded and he lunged at her with a powerful scream before the world around them turned a brilliant, painful white._

_The last thing she remembered were his eyes._

_So sad_

_So very beautiful_

_Cobalt._

Sophie gasped as she woke – a sharp intake of breath as though she was just emerging from the depths of a very deep lake. A sleep so restless she would feel no benefit from it, and she lunged forward out of her seat, almost falling headfirst into the footwell were it not for the outstretched arm of the turian driver. His aid was not welcome; she recoiled from him the moment her bearings had returned.

“Do not touch me,” she hissed, almost a whisper. Her voice didn’t lift an octave when she spoke again, “Don’t you _ever_ touch me.”

Ghost pulled his arm away from her, his attention returning to the road ahead, or what little he could see considering just how dark it was out there.

“Sorry…” his apology was cynical and by no means genuine. “… next time I’ll let you smash your teeth out on the dashboard.”

It was the most she’d ever really heard Ghost speak in such a casual manner, and everything coming out of his repulsive mouth rubbed her up the wrong way. She couldn’t quite recall feeling this vexed by him in all of the twelve hours or so she’d known him. Perhaps it was purely due to the fact that she was hungry and tired. Sophie shot him a glare from her side of the tank—not that he saw it, his gaze fixed purely on the path ahead.

An ugly silence settled in the Mako, hanging in the air like wet smog until Ghost decided to speak again, much to Sophie’s chagrin. She would have been quite happy to just sit and collect herself for a few hours.

 “Are you okay?”

Sophie didn't care for the concern she heard in Ghost's voice--she didn't need it, and sure as hell didn't want it

“Why, suddenly giving a shit?” she spat while aggressively yanking at the itchy blanket as she attempted once again to settle into her broken, spring-riddled seat. She hated this thing; damn tank stank of old sandwiches and wet dog, the blanket she was gripping so intensely was threadbare, and had about the same comfort factor as a porcupine.

She heard the turian’s voice again; smooth, flanged, gorgeous and the most irritating thing she’d ever heard since coming to this god forsaken piss-hole known as Shanxi. She wasn’t in the mood for him or anything else. It was never a good idea to engage Sophie after a long, stressful sleep.

“Tough room…” his words were a mere rumble against the shuddering frame of the Mako they’d stolen from the garage at Mt.Myka’s facility. Sophie chose to ignore Ghost, and just turned her attention to the viewing port on her side of the tank. Not that there was much to see, it was dark out and they were travelling without the main beams on. Dangerous, but necessary if they wished to remain discrete.

This had to be another dream, a horrible nightmare she would soon wake from. It was the sudden bounce of the vehicle that confirmed the reality she was currently trapped in, and she couldn’t help but glare distastefully at the driver.

“Could you be more careful please?”

“Oh… I’m sorry. Are you criticising my driving?”

“If you can call it driving.”

“You want to have a go, human? Because it’s pretty difficult to drive a primitive alien tank when it’s pitch black out there!”

“I hope you hit a tree. Put us both out of our misery.”

“Well, maybe I will if it’ll shut you up.”

“Good.”

That silence hit again as they seemingly traversed over every single bump and crack Ghost could possibly find and she was certain she could hear him growling – no not growling but whining – deep in his chest. The noise bugged her and grated on her already raw nerves.

“You know what’s wrong with your kind?” She was feeling spiteful, and it seemed to make perfect sense to her right at that moment to attempt to make Ghost see the error of his ways, and why being born a turian was inherently bad.

The wide-eyed expression he gave her was completely lost on her sleep-fogged mind, even given the harsh acidic tone he used when he spoke.

“Wrong with _my kind_?!”  There was a hint hidden there in his delivery, a hint to shut her fool mouth up before she really put her foot in it, but Sophie was on a roll and who was he to tell her to be quiet? She’d done nothing wrong, she’d only ever tried to help him and he hadn’t exactly been all that appreciative about the fact.

“Yes, _your kind_. All you have is violence. There’s no dignity about you, you’re disgusting…” Even as Sophie said it she knew she shouldn’t have and it was the reaction she gained from it that solidified this fact.

Ghost slammed on the anchors, the tank skidding to a very abrupt stop that had both parties almost flying through the windshield. But he didn’t look at her, at least not right away and her flesh tightened around her as she realised what was happening.

She’d woke up in a bad mood and she’d just said some malicious things to gain a reaction. Sophie was looking for a fight, she damn well knew this but this was a fight she wasn’t going to win, and she felt her guts drop into her knees when he slowly turned his head - like a machine - and fixed her with those bright, purple eyes.

“What did you just say? _Disgusting_?”

She didn’t respond, her mouth as dry as a bone as she attempted to swallow what little saliva she could form in her mouth. But he didn’t wait for an answer.

 “Don’t you _dare_ talk down to me, human.” Ghost’s voice wasn’t angry, it was livid—a low violent thrum against the rumble of the tanks engine. His eyes burned, glowering under his heavy brow, shielding a boiling hot rage deep within as he glared at her with unfathomable fury, his mandibles twitching on the sides of his face.

She opened her mouth to speak, to at least defend her corner to somehow justify her foul assumption but before she could utter a sound, Ghost had lunged out of his seat and was towering over her, pinning her into her corner with no notion of escape.

Sophie let out a startled whimper as she meekly shuffled deeper into her spring addled chair, the spokes of metal creaking and poking her as she did so. She was scared of this thing, so scared, and he damn well knew it.

“You know _nothing_ about us!” He was shouting, a noise so abhorrent it made her flinch.

“But I know exactly what you are, **_Sophie Knighton_**.”

The way he said her name churned her guts. She needn’t have bothered to introduce herself back at the facility—he knew who she was all along, and the thought did not sit well in her stomach, not at all.

“They told me all about you, how you were going to cut me up, pull me apart and document my insides for the good of medical science. You think you can pick at ruins and call yourself an expert?! You are a butcher, nothing more! Do not presume you know a thing about me or my people because you-know- ** _nothing_**!”

He was getting closer, the stench of hot cinnamon on his breath permeated her senses and forced her deeper still into her chair, tears welling in her eyes as she so desperately blinked to contain them. Again, she tried to speak but only managed to stutter before he raised his voice again.

“We’re not the ones taking your children, _sick children_ , forcing filth down their gullets and parading them to our friends like freaks. Explain to me, now, how _that_ makes _you_ better!”

It didn’t make her better than him, didn’t make humans better than the turians. Of course it didn’t and she had never been sorrier for opening her big mouth, and she was now all but cowering and crumpled into the corner of her seat. If she were perfectly honest with herself, she couldn’t have expected any less than what she received. This was not an argument with her ex-husband, this was her insulting an entire species she simply did not understand. Sophie regretted her words thoroughly.

Ghost glared down at her, trapping her in her little corner with those enormous arms of his as he seemed to demand an answer he knew he wouldn’t get.

Referring to the poor boy only forced her to relive that moment. She wanted to tell him that he hadn’t been there, that he didn’t know what it was like to have witnessed something so needlessly brutal. She wanted to tell him that it was his eyes that haunted her dreams, that he wouldn’t look away and that he’d broke into her soul and no amount of shaking would set him loose.

His eyes, they were so sad, so very sad.

And so blue, so very blue.

Beautiful.

Cobalt.

But she didn’t, instead Sophie just sat there twisting her lips together and swallowing hard to keep her emotions in check before allowing her gaze to drop to the space between them. She would not cry in front of him, she would not.

“That’s what I thought,” Ghost hissed between bared, sharp teeth; the plates on his face flared aggressively before he forcefully pushed himself away from her and allowed his bulk to drop back into his seat on the other side of the tank. The entire vehicle rocked with the force and Sophie was certain she could hear the suspension creaking but she remained silent as she thought about Ghost’s words.

They cut deeper than she would have liked. He’d touched a raw nerve with only his tongue, and the lash it had left behind stung like nothing else.

There were a few moments of quiet; it was thick and hung in the air like a fog, but eventually the engine roared to life again and once more they were on the move. The next few hours of their journey were silent, enough time to sit and reflect on this most recent event. From now on, Sophie would be much more careful with her words. She figured it might be better for the both of them if she didn’t speak at all from now on.

* * *

The silence was welcome in a sense, at least for the first hour or so, though perhaps he’d been a little harsh in his attack against Sophie who was still crumpled in her seat on the opposite side of the tank. The situation was hardly ideal for either of them but he had to get to the extraction point or he’d be left here to rot. Unlike most turians, Davix honed a particular desire to live. Davix Fedorian was a lot of things, but blinded by order simply wasn’t one of them.

He thought about speaking, if only for the sake of breaking the silence but each time he glanced over to the small body deep in her chair he thought better of it. He didn’t much fancy another confrontation, and he was quite certain the little human didn’t really want that either.

The journey continued on for a while, with him traversing the muddy terrain as best he could without rocking the vehicle too much. These primitive human tanks were not easy to drive. Luckily, the technology wasn’t completely alien, just much simpler than he was used to. Damn thing handled like a brick though. Spirits curse the engineer who designed this piece of shit tank, most definitely.

Eventually the wheels found flat land and the drive became much smoother, even pleasant. He relaxed a little in his chair, relishing how the seat creaked under his weight and rested a single elbow on the edge of the door viewing port. A quick glance out of the same port revealed the enormous lake not too far to the east. The moons hanging in the dark velvet of the night sky, two to be precise, dancing in the rippling waters. It was quite beautiful, but Davix didn’t have the time to appreciate it for long.

He heard it long before he saw it, and it seemed Sophie did too when the tank came to a steady halt next to the lake. A steady familiar hum reverberated in the air. Davix could almost feel the vibration in his teeth.

“What’s that noise?” the human asked habitually which in turn caused Davix to lift a hand to her in order to quiet her tongue, for her own safety rather than anything else. He recognised the sound, it was a turian ship, but what was it doing all the way out here? The only turian this far out from the camp was him, at least that was his understanding of the situation. There would be no reason to send out a scouting party for one lone straggler.

He exited the tank and meandered across the grassy bank to investigate. And then he saw it, an attack shuttle hovering just above the thicket of trees on the far west of the bank. Davix didn’t hail it, this was no rescue mission; there was a bad taste in the air hitting the back of his throat. Something was wrong, terribly wrong. He could feel it in his blood and he felt like the shuttle itself was the thing watching him and his human companion - who was now outside of the tank but remained very close to it - as opposed to anyone piloting the thing.

Slowly he backed up towards the tank, before warily turning on the shuttle.

“Get back in the tank,” he demanded of Sophie attempting to keep the aggressive panic out of his voice. But she just looked at him as though she couldn’t understand what he meant. But then he saw her eyes, so blue - shocking - in the artificial light of the craft behind him, shift. The motion was so slight but he saw it nonetheless as they flickered so very slightly away from his gaze and pointed behind him.

Davix thought at first that she was simply looking at the shuttle hanging above the trees, but fear hung in her gaze, a fear she hadn’t even shown him even when he pinned her against the wall of his cell not too long ago. And it was that gaze that forced him to turn and see for himself.

He simply wasn’t prepared for what he saw, and if he was going to be honest with himself, he wasn’t certain what he was even looking at, three of them altogether all holding pheaston rifles and all slowly gaining ground on the tank and Davix’s travelling companion.

They were massive, almost as big as he was and they almost glowed eerily in the moonlight. He could hear chatter, but not in any language he could fathom; it was … digital, and they moved like nothing he’d ever known. They jerked and twisted as they walked.

“Spirits…”

They were familiar but not, all in the same instance. Whatever they were, they were no longer turian.


	4. Beacon

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A huge HUGE thank you to RobinYourgrave for betaing this thing for me. I don't know what I'd do without you!

Davix spent far too long contemplating the _things_ advancing on them, only vaguely taking note that the attack shuttle hadn’t shifted from its spot over the wood. His brain simply couldn’t fathom what he was looking at and he would be lying to himself if he thought he wasn’t at least a little bit apprehensive about this whole situation. The initial panic had long subsided, but he was aware that letting his guard down could very well be a fatal mistake .   
  
But they—these _things_ —were turian all the same. Sure, they looked a bit strange, but nothing here on Shanxi made much sense. They weren’t openly attacking them – at least not yet – perhaps they could even help.   
  
Considering this, Davix eventually turned his attention back to the little human. It surprised him just how shaken she was at the sight of the trio approaching them. Davix frowned at her and her rather strange behaviour before grabbing her attention by breaking their collective silence.   
  
“Get back in the tank. I can handle this.” He spoke with what he thought was an air of confidence, though if truth be told, Davix wasn’t sure if she had even noticed he'd spoken at all.  
  
“I-I’ve seen it, I’ve seen it before. I-I’ve s-seen it.” Sophie’s voice was a mere quake in the breeze, her eyes glistening in the moonlight, and she shuddered all over . Davix knew little to nothing about humans but there was no denying that this girl was frightened out of her mind by what she saw behind him. And she was no good to him at all in this state. Sophie’s shift in demeanour was odd considering how she had faced him down back in that corridor not so long ago. She could stand before a charging eight-foot turian, but the mere sight of these slow, shambling things rendered her jabbering.   
  
It didn’t make sense to him – not right now, at least.  
  
“Sophie, listen to me,” the action was unintentional - purely instinctual - but Davix lifted both hands and placed them so carefully on her face, his fingers almost touching at the back of her head as he wove them through her hair. He wasn’t certain why he did it - the idea of touching a human was repulsive, but somehow touching Sophie didn’t bring him the revulsion he thought it would. She was soft and warm; pleasant in her own way – but the action seemed to calm her nerves enough for her to focus.   
  
“I can handle this. You need to get back in the tank, please?” Davix repeated himself softly one last time, but what Sophie said next imprinted on his brain like a hot brand to flesh.  
  
“Don’t let them take you.” That was all she said; a mere whisper in the breeze . Her voice was small but her warning was powerful, so much so that Davix struggled to drag his gaze from her as he questioned her silently, both mandibles twitching apprehensively. Still, it came as a relief when she finally retreated into the vehicle and closed the door behind her.   
  
Twice Davix had confirmed that he had control of the situation. In truth, he had no idea how he was going to deal with it at all. What he did know was that these things had pheaston rifles, and he wanted one. Though, he figured establishing if they were friend or foe would be a good place to start before acquiring a familiar weapon.   
  
_“Don’t let them take you.”_  
  
Sophie’s voice echoed in his head like a bad dream and Davix found himself stopping in his tracks to physically shake her off with a sharp twitch of his head. The sensation was a strange one but there had been an urgency to her whisper that he was struggling to pass. The best he could do for now was to simply ignore it.   
  
“Hello?” he called, lifting a single hand in greeting to these strange looking turians.   
  
_‘Hello? Really? You truly are an idiot…’_ he thought viciously to himself, even rolling his eyes in disdain as he continued to walk confidently towards the party. It went without saying that Davix Fedorian was not born with silver teeth. Speech-craft certainly wasn’t his strength.  
  
The closer he got to them the more he could see that these things were indeed turian in origin but had been altered somehow; their bodies contorted and mounted on strange technology Davix struggled to recognise. Even given his lengthy career as a military mechanic, he’d never seen whatever it was he was looking at right now. These things were all tubes and circuit boards which made little to no sense in his head. It was strange how the turian mind worked; clearly Davix could see that these things were not as they should be, not what they once were, and still he somehow managed to convince himself that it wasn’t quite real.   
  
They were familiar, turian, friendly faces, the first for days and they wanted to help. It was the only way his brain could force the situation into making any sort of sense. And it just didn’t. Not at all. Yet still, he was failing to make a connection.   
  
_“Don’t let them take you.”_  
  
She was there again; that stubborn little human crawling under his skin. He was becoming a little annoyed with himself for letting her get to him in the way that she was. How dare she fill him with such doubt about his own people?   
  
“Hello there, friends, passing through, are we?” Davix’s voice was casual in its delivery, his secondary voice so carefully monitored to show these men that he meant no harm.  
  
The plan failed.  
  
One of the _things_ shoved the barrel of its rifle in Davix’s face and spat its strange, obscure digital language at him .   
  
Davix habitually recoiled from the gun and raised both hands as a signal that he was unarmed. This was a lie, obviously, considering he had Sophie’s pistol stuffed into the back of his makeshift pants made from a discarded bed-sheet found back at the human lab.   
  
“Whoa, okay, not friends, got it,” he deadpanned while taking a single step back from the creatures that were now attempting to surround and flank him. They weren’t just strange to look at, these things were _alien_. The carapace didn’t seem to exist at all anymore – the shape was there but that was all—an odd amalgam of flesh and machine. Were these things a macabre result of human experimentation? Would this have been Davix’s fate if left back at the facility? Or was this something else?   
  
Did he really want to know?  
  
These were not familiar, not friendly, not even turian. He didn’t know what they were, at least not anymore; his stomach twisted deep in his belly as he heard Sophie’s voice echo again in his mind.   
  
_“Don’t let them take you.”_   
  
He was quite certain these things - whatever they were - didn’t understand him while they continued to chatter inanely in that strange, computerised voice they had, and it was only now on closer inspection that he was beginning to actually think about what Sophie had been trying to tell him.   
  
It was only now that he started to truly appreciate what danger he was putting himself in.   
  
What danger he was putting them _both_ in.   
  
They were not familiar.  
  
They were not friendly.  
  
Not turian.  
  
Not anymore.  
  
These were _titans_.   
  
A fable, a fairy tale born from a dead religious order. A thing to be marvelled at with wide eyes while huddled alongside a roaring fire on your mother’s lap. He remembered the stories vividly; how they paraded across Palaven’s lands searching for the Path of Stars, and how they slaughtered any that opposed them.   
  
Tales as tall as him, that was for sure.   
  
Davix vaguely recalled the human back at the facility, the one who screamed about artifacts and hit him in the face with the butt of his rifle – Dowell, was it? – accusing him of being one of these things. And he could see it now—they were enormous.   
  
_Monsters, like he was._   
  
Sophie had seen these things, or things like these, before and it seemed the sight of whatever it had been had deeply affected her. This sudden understanding irked him, and he surprised himself that he hadn’t given it much thought before this moment. He didn’t want to believe it, didn’t want to force it all to make any sense in his already frazzled mind and yet here he was facing it; staring into the cold soulless eyes of a titan of Palaven.   
  
He had never felt fear like it, so hot and acidic – twisting and writhing in his guts so viciously that breathing was more difficult that it should have been. It was all he could do to keep a tight grip on his composure, and what little he held was frail at best.   
  
This was how he lost the others; by stepping into traps and ensnaring himself in them like a fish in a net. Yet again, he had strolled into danger’s path, and had done so _casually_ ; but, he would not let them take him.   
  
Lessons were sometimes learned the hard way.   
  
Desperately clutching at whatever straws he could as he attempted to fathom exactly what was happening, Davix was also watching closely as one of the things stepped around him, attempting to flank him and it was then that he saw the others beginning to crowd around the tank in the near distance. There was at least half a dozen or more of them at first glance.   
  
What in the name of Palaven were these things? And where were they coming from? Truth be told, Davix wasn’t sure he wanted an answer to either of those questions. They were hostile—whatever they were—and they were standing right in their path.   
  
Sophie was inside the Mako, and he could see, even from here, that she was panicking. She shifted from one side of the tank to the next not knowing where to be, with nowhere to go, and she had no weapon. Davix had the only means of defence between the two of them sitting in the seat of his wrapped-up bedsheet around his waist. The realisation of this made him feel nauseous.   
  
It wasn’t until one of the creatures opened the passenger side door to the tank that Davix knew if he didn’t act right now at this very moment, all was lost. Neither had come this far for it to end here. No way, no how.   
  
He spun on the ex-turian standing directly in front of him and grabbed the barrel of the pheaston in its hand, forcefully shoving it away from him. Davix raised a single foot and planted it on the creature’s chest. It looked down briefly at the offending appendage before glancing back up at Davix, who smirked knowingly at it with the tilt of a single mandible.  
  
“I’ll take this, thanks,” he said flatly before kicking the titan hard, sending it sprawling before Davix composed the gun and opened fire, blowing the creature’s head from its shoulders with a single shot. The others didn’t even have a chance to react to Davix’s attack; he abruptly turned the rifle on them. All three lay dead, gaping and smouldering at his feet within seconds.   
  
For titans they weren’t very bright or disciplined, it seemed. There had been no strength in the creature he’d kicked, odd but within his favour. He just hoped the rest of them were just as stupid.  
  
There was something empowering about holding a rifle again, and Davix held the gun close to his chest intimately like a sorely missed lover. He was in control again, able to channel his authority through his pheaston, and he wasted little time amongst the bodies of these fabled titans. A children’s story, now lying in ruins at his feet.   
  
He sprinted towards the tank – the vehicle now infested with those things trying to get in and he could see Sophie inside screaming and struggling against at least two of them; one had a hold of her wrists on one side of the Mako while another opposite was attempting to get past her feet as she kicked it relentlessly in the face.   
  
These things – _titans_ – were going to tear her to pieces. They were weak, though only in comparison to him. There was no way Sophie was strong enough to fight them off on her own. They’d shown mere interest in him but they were openly attacking her, and she was no use to him dead.   
  
“I’m coming, hang in there, I’m coming, _I’m coming_!” A mantra he panted with each heavy step and one he had to believe as he ran as fast as his powerful legs could propel him towards the tank. The thought of Sophie suffering and fighting for her life in the confines of that tank turned Davix’s blood to ice. The thought was a strange one; that he somehow felt a connection to her, that he actually _cared_ about what happened to her, but he had little time to dwell on it as he was suddenly noticed by other titans emerging from the trees and running towards him, some screeching while others ran on all fours.   
  
Like animals.  
  
 _Monsters._  
  
Killing them was easy, a single blast from his rifle blew holes in their frail bodies, often burning them enough for them to literally fall to pieces, but they were slowing him down. This was undoubtedly the intent.   
  
Eventually the stream of titans pouring out of the woods came to end – though Davix surmised the term _‘titan’_ was now inaccurate. These things were little more than husks of the things they once were; hollow and emotionless, nothing. He didn’t bother attacking the three that were left accosting the windshield of the tank. He instead zoned in on the creature at Sophie’s head, grabbing it by the throat – his talons sinking into the delicate flesh like raw meat – and pulling it out of the vehicle.   
  
Throwing the thing on the floor, listening to it screech at him unintelligibly and watching absently as it writhed like a worm at the wheel of the tank, Davix didn’t bother to waste ammo killing it. He lifted his foot and stamped on the creature’s head–hard—with enough force that its skull simply shattered under his weight. But there was no gore, no explosion of teeth and brains like Davix was expecting. Its head was hollow, but even with the absence of a brain to destroy the thing still died. Its body dropped limp on the ground.   
  
Davix’s attention shifted to the thing on the other side of the tank and even as Sophie continued to struggle against it, booting the thing in the jaw to prevent it coming any closer, it persisted, pawing at her leg somewhat feebly.   
Shoving his body into the tank, Davix pushed his chest against Sophie’s back, forcing her to sit up against him and pointed the barrel of his gun at the face of the monster attacking her. Habitually he pressed the palm of his free hand against her ear and forced her to lean into the flesh of his throat.   
  
Pheastons, when fired in close quarters, were _loud_. Unintentionally deafening the girl who was to help him get back to Palaven was certainly not on his to-do list. She didn’t fight him and to Davix’s mild surprise, she buried her face into the hollow of his cowl and wrapped an arm around his head. Perhaps she was genuinely pleased to see him, though he assumed her reaction was simply her desperation to get away from the thing attacking her.   
  
There was a moment between him and the creature now simply staring at him from the opposite end of the tank. Davix was hesitating, he could feel himself beginning to empathise with that thing staring blankly back at him. It moved its jaw rhythmically without sound, its mandibles slowly lifting and lowering. The fear returned, that sickening lump festering in his guts at the mere sight of it.   
  
These things had once been his own.  
  
His people.  
  
His friends.  
  
Family.  
  
 _Turian._  
  
Familiar and not at all in the same instance.   
  
This could have been him.  
  
A Titan of Palaven.  
  
 _“Don’t let them take you.”_  
  
“I’m sorry…” the words left him before he’d even had the chance to process them and he swore the husk of a turian understood him as it tilted its head and its brow raised quizzically before he opened fire and obliterated the creature with a single shot.   
  
The next few seconds passed like centuries as Sophie unfurled her arm wrapped firmly around Davix’s head, and placed the palm of that hand on the hard shell of his chest. She sat up, first gazing at the space where her attacker had once been before turning her head and fixing him with those shocking blue eyes.   
  
He simply stared back for what seemed like the longest time, just thankful that his guide was unhurt; minus a few scratches on her face, superficial wounds at most. It wasn’t until that moment that he realised that humans did not sing as he was doing at that moment to show his gratitude that she was still alive, but also displaying his discontentment for the situation. Humans were silent for the most part - an alien concept for him. Sophie’s emotions were pooled in her eyes, so wide, so big and so very blue, and the fear she radiated from them was akin to his own. Somehow Davix found a twisted sort of comfort in knowing that she was just as afraid of these things as he was.  
  
He could feel her breaths on his face; her scent, hot, sweet and heady, filling his head. She was a pretty thing - for a human - and it wasn’t until then that he realised his hand was still resting on her face, his fingers entwined in the cool, soft wisps of her hair.   
  
This small, pretty thing, so soft and fragile had saved him from that pokey room back at the human testing lab. Forsaken her own duty for his sake, and faced him down to expose a cancer within her own ranks. It was a strange thought; that she had shown him fear, had submitted to him but stood by her word that she wanted to help.   
  
And he’d tried to kill it like an insect.   
  
The memory came screaming back to him with the sight of those vicious bruises on her neck; the way he’d wrapped his hand around her throat and slammed her against the wall of his cell. He’d listened to her choking, watched mercilessly as she’d started to die in his hand, had taken pleasure in it all because he didn’t know any better.   
  
“ _All you have is violence … you’re disgusting…_ ” Her voice echoed in his head once again as he pieced the words she'd spoke together and found the vile truth within them. She hadn’t been wrong.  
  
There was blood on the collar of her white coat, brown and dry, where his talons had punctured her skin, and the guilt that he was the one that had done that to her, to this small, fragile thing that just wanted to help, started to gnaw away at his insides.   
  
But Davix didn’t have the time to apologise, to at least attempt to rectify his wrong when he was suddenly dragged from the vehicle by the legs. He let out a startled cry as his hands fell from Sophie and onto the seat of the tank in a desperate attempt to prevent himself from falling, dropping his rifle and hearing it clatter into the foot-well.   
  
Sophie cried out in unison, though she didn’t recoil into the tank like he assumed she would. Instead she reached for him, grasping both of his hands now sunk into the leather of seat and attempted to pull him back into the tank. She simply wasn’t strong enough, and he was then hauled back into the night by the three remaining husks he had unfortunately forgotten about.   
  
His distraction would be his undoing, that much Davix was certain of.   
  
The creatures had him at their advantage and they proceeded to pummel and bite him while he lay on his back thrashing and attempting to break free. The things were not strong on their own, but there was always power in numbers. Though Davix managed to land a few blows; he was struggling to fight them at such an angle, and was outnumbered while all three of them pinned him to the ground. That was until a familiar sound shot from the tank’s direction, destroying two of the three creatures laying on top of him. Their bodies were blown to one side with the force.  
  
Without much hesitation, Davix reached up, wrapped his fingers around the head of the last remaining husk and slammed its face into the ground, relishing in how it collapsed beneath his hand. That was before quickly craning his neck – still lying on his back in the grass – and spying Sophie gazing at him from the door of the tank, his dropped pheaston in hand.   
  
The gun dwarfed her small frame, but she held it up in both hands with a confidence he hadn’t truly seen from her yet. Just looking at her with his rifle forced a sense of pride to swell in Davix’s throat and he pointed at her with both hands comically.   
  
“Nice shot!” He called to her, laughing a little as he did so, though even he even he didn’t know if this was through genuine amusement or sheer nerves.   
  
She smiled back at him in response - well at least what Davix could assume was a smile, her teeth flashing in the artificial light of the tank – and the expression lit her entire face up in the nicest way. She appreciated the compliment it seemed, though Davix was just dumbfounded that she could even hold the thing, never mind fire it. Pheaston rifles were damn heavy, even for turian hands at times.   
  
Rolling onto his belly, Davix got to his feet, noting how his body was beginning to ache and that he was beginning to develop a limp. He was getting too old for this. He strolled over to the tank and hooked a single arm over the doorway where Sophie was still sitting.   
  
“Lock the door this time, yeah?” Davix deadpanned though not without a slight chuckle hanging in his tone.   
  
Sophie merely nodded, her mouth curling upwards in what he could only assume was amusement as she held the rifle out to him. He almost took it; fingers twitching to lift it from her, but it was with a second glance (and also knowing there were other rifles scattered about them now), that he thought better of it.   
  
“You keep it,” he said simply with a soft nod to his head. She obviously knew how to use it and he surprised even himself when he realised that he trusted her with it. It was becoming obvious that they needed each other more than they initially realised, and they seemed to work well as a team so far. Perhaps not all humans were bad meat.   
He watched amusedly as she pulled the rifle back and embraced it, her small slender fingers wrapping coyly around the body of the gun, before uttering a simple “Thank you” and shuffling back into the tank.   
  
Davix closed the door as she went and heard the tell-tale click of the vehicle locking. He was confident all the husks had been dealt with, but one could never be too careful. Cautiously, he strolled over to one of the bodies littered about the bank of the lake and rescued one of the rifles the creatures came with.   
  
The plan was to scout the area and check for more hostiles. Now he knew what he was dealing with they would be much easier to fight; well, that was the theory anyway.   
But it seemed he had forgotten about the turian attack shuttle still hovering above the wood, until it opened fire on him and forced him to retreat for cover. A few attempted pheaston rounds confirmed that they did little to no damage to turian attack shuttles. Davix figured he should have already known this.   
  
The ship was incoming, guns blazing and all Davix could do was run around the tank to take cover from the heavy fire. The Mako could take it, spirits knew the damn box was sturdy enough. There was no doubt in his mind that Sophie was in the best place she could possibly be at this point.   
  
It was strange having one of his own people’s ships firing on him in such a way, and it was so difficult not to feel at least a little betrayed by this fact. But it remained true that these things were not turian, and he, at least, held no desire to make friends with them about as much as they wanted to return the gesture.   
  
He could hear machinery whirring, and his attention was drawn to the sound on top of the tank. Even as he manoeuvred his bulk around the body of the vehicle to avoid the attack shuttle, he could see the gun on the roof was having problems. Sophie was attempting to work the cannon from inside but it simply juddered and strained when she tried to shift the gun upwards.  
  
The tank had stood for so long in the garage that the gears within the gun had seized. Given the right tools, a bit of grease and about two hours he could have fixed the problem easily. Unfortunately for the both of them, he had none of those things.   
  
“Shit,” Davix spat as he made his way to the driver’s side viewing port and rapped on the window with a single talon. Sophie was within at the centre of the tank, desperately attempting to calibrate the gun and get it moving, but telling by the pained look on her face, she was failing. His tapping on the glass caught her attention, and she spun her head on her neck, her blue eyes instantly connecting with his in her blind panic.  
  
Davix made a spinning motion with a pointed finger – _“Does the gun turn?”_  
  
Sophie’s attention went back to the control panel, tapped a few buttons and pulled at levers and Davix could hear the gears struggling against one another inside the mechanics of the tank’s cannon. It was with a grim realisation and a saddened downward pull of her mouth, that Sophie turned back to him and slowly shook her head.   
  
Davix grimaced with a flick of his mandibles. It was time to improvise.   
  
The attack shuttle was still spiralling above him and the Mako but there was no pattern to its movement. He had the assumption that the thing wasn’t being manned by an actual pilot, but being controlled remotely elsewhere in the field. Not that he really had the time to go scouting and look for the perpetrator. Perhaps if he and Sophie could shoot the thing down the one responsible would come forward.   
  
Sophie was still attempting to calibrate the cannon within the tank as Davix leapt from the ground and clambered onto the Mako’s roof. He placed his pheaston carefully at his feet before stepping over to the struggling cannon. The shuttle was in the near distance, banking and about to turn on him again as he grabbed the body of the cannon and poised his feet against the roof of the tank, bracing himself for a struggle.   
  
He pulled at the gun, his feet slipping, clawed toes ripping the paint from the metal on the roof as he strained and grimaced against the cannon; the muscles in his arms screaming and the soles of his feet burning in the effort. Davix feared for a moment that he would break it, but he could feel it moving. The gears squealed within the mechanism and just as the shuttle was on top of them once more, the barrels of its weapons aglow with the incoming onslaught, the cannon came free.   
  
The sudden motion of the gun was so strong it flung Davix halfway across the roof of the tank and he landed hard on his rump enough to dent the tank. The impact was painful but he didn’t dwell on whether or not he would have a sore ass in the morning, though he did sit there in awe and watch the gun lock onto its target and take fire.   
  
“Look at you go,” he heard himself whisper in amazement as the cannon whizzed and spun on its gears. That tiny human inside was doing all of this, calibrating her weapon and defending her honour deep within the vehicle. The gun wasn’t accurate, the technology was primitive by turian standards, but it was miles better than a mere pheaston rifle. No doubt the ammo in this thing were anti-aircraft, definitely enough to take down a small imperial attack shuttle.   
  
Which was what happened next. The cannon winged the craft just as it turned again towards the tank sending it into a spiral that sent it hurtling right for the Mako. It seemed that Sophie had seen it too as the gun went limp and she began to pound her fists on the glass of the driver’s side viewing port.  
  
“Spirits, _no!_ ”   
  


* * *

  
“Got it! Yes!” Sophie squealed in glee the moment the missile collided with the small craft almost bouncing in her seat. She was getting good at this shooting malarkey, so she felt little shame with being at least a bit proud of her achievements. Of course, she had Ghost mostly to thank for them. The first time he’d left his weapon behind and the Mako’s canon was only working now because he forced it to move. But there was still a little pride to be had so she took it.   
  
That was until she went to fire again and the cannon was no longer responding. A few more jabs into the firing trigger made her realise that the cannon was dead, which in turn prompted her to glance outside and assess the damage. The craft was hit, quite badly but what she didn’t notice right away was the that it was heading right for the Mako, a fiery ball of death dropping out of the sky. She had to get out of this tank and she had to get out now.   
  
The locking mechanism for the door was simple enough, a switch on the side of the drivers control panel which electronically locked the whole vehicle down. But the switch was jammed and no amount of tugging and pulling at it was making it come any looser. She was stuck in here, and she was going to die.   
  
“Oh god… oh god… Ghost? Ghost, help! Help me!” She could hear herself screaming as the huge turian dropped from the roof and came into view, slapping his hands against the viewing port. This had to be the second time today that she had been so pleased to see him.   
  
“The lock!” she pointed, shaken and panicked to the switch next to the gear stick. “Jammed! I’m trapped!”  
  
She watched him weigh-up the situation as the seconds passed and the ship whirled closer still and she saw him quickly glance up at the blazing inferno about to engulf the Mako.   
  
‘ _He’s going to bolt…_ ’ she thought, feeling the tears pool in her eyes. ‘ _He’s going to run and leave me here…_ ’  
  
But he didn’t. Instead, he motioned with his hand for her to get away from the door, an order she obeyed instantly while he stepped back and kicked the door panel so hard Sophie feared the tank would literally tip over with the sheer force he applied to it.   
  
But the door was open, and Ghost was there with both arms outstretched, chest heaving as he panted in his urgency.   
  
Sophie didn’t hesitate, grabbing both his hands if only to get her out of the vehicle, away from the fire, away from imminent death. And it was at that moment, once again that time slowed almost to a stop as he literally pulled her much smaller body into his arms.   
  
“It’s alright, I got you.” Ghost was whispering but she could hear something else, so sweet, so calming, like the twittering of songbirds in the trees. He was singing, she could hear it deep within his chest, he was singing to her.   
  
And then he ran towards the lake and he ran like nothing Sophie had ever seen before, with such grace and fluidity in his movements it took mere seconds to gain speed on those legs so akin to that of a raptor. He was so fast, even as the craft collided with the Mako and the sheer heat from the impact forced her to wince against his chest, Ghost never faltered, not once. He was so fast, liquid, she swore they were flying and she flew with him bundled in his arms towards the lake.   
  
Sophie dared to glance over his shoulder between the plates that jutted from his arms; the craft was still gaining on them, tumbling and rolling towards them as bits of the shuttle broke off and clattered to the ground. If anything had been piloting that thing they were long dead by now. But it was gaining. Ghost was fast, faster than Sophie had ever fathomed a turian could possibly be, but the incoming shuttle was faster.   
  
“Brace yourself!” came her next order but before she had the time to process its meaning she was being flung, hard, from Ghosts arms. He was throwing her away from him, into the water as he leapt in front of the oncoming ruin of a shuttle.   
  
She turned her body habitually, reaching for him, silently pleading that he not leave her and their eyes locked as their fingertips touched only briefly before the water consumed and invaded every sense she had.   
  


* * *

  
The water was cold, so cold that Sophie struggled to catch her breath as she surfaced, and it was so dark now; the only illumination coming from the lights of the now drowned turian attack shuttle at the bottom of the lake. It was because of that light, as she spun in the water and called Ghost’s name that she even saw him at all.   
  
He was a fair distance away; his torso draped bodily over one of the wings of the shuttle that had broken off, both hands dangling listlessly into the water on the opposite side. He looked like he had been dropped from a great height. Ghost wasn’t moving, and it dawned on Sophie then that he was unconscious, and she needed to get to him, fast. She figured he was too heavy to float on his own, but if he stayed on that wing she had a good chance of getting him back to shore without too much trouble.  
  
She was close, so close now as she swam as fast as her arms and legs would allow, her muscles burning against the icy chill of the lake, but the odds were against her as she watched Ghost drift and bob in the water. With each steady shift of his raft his body slid further into the depths until gravity triumphed and Sophie watched, dismayed and helpless, as he slipped into the water with a gut wrenching _plink_.  
  
“No!” The word was a mere gasp before Sophie dove in after him. He was sinking fast, a stream of bubbles escaping the gaps in his mouth, making his decent much faster, and Sophie swam after him. The unforgiving chill had reached her bones, her muscles screamed against the icy cold and the water stung her eyes; she swam onward, regardless. He was sinking into the darkness rapidly, but Sophie was faster.   
  
Ghost would not die today.  
  
_He would not die today._   
  
Sophie was not going to let him die today, she had sacrificed too much to let that happen.  
  
Not today, not now, not ever.  
  
 ** _Not today._**  
  
She made a grab for him, missing initially - her fingers skimming the end of his nose - but on her second attempt, she hooked a couple of fingers around a single mandible and pulled him towards her. She grabbed the other one and used them as handles as she began to swim back to the surface. Her legs kicked, often striking Ghost in the chest in her flailing. Her arms and hands throbbed as she desperately pulled him up from the depths, her lungs were on fire and her heart ready to explode. She needed to breathe, she needed air, and she needed it _now_.   
  
He was too heavy, she wasn’t going to make it; it was too far back up, and they were both going to drown.   
  
It had all been for nothing.   
  
They were both going to die.  
  
 _They were both going to die._  
  
 ** _They were both going to die._**  
  
 ** _It had all been for nothing._ **  
  
Then suddenly, she broke the surface, her head flung back and she dragged that sweet night-time air, so crisp, so cold and so damn fresh into her lungs in one long, whooping breath, all the while pulling the huge turian’s head out of the water. Leaning back, Sophie hooked a single arm around his neck and dragged him alongside her as she swam back towards the shore. Being such an awkward shape and given the hooded cowl at his back, Sophie had to position Ghost almost on his side facing her in order to keep a proper grip on his bulk . She had to be half his size and his neck was so thick it was going to be difficult to prevent him simply slipping back under the waves.  
  
“Fuck… fuck me… you’re so heavy… They feed you bricks on Palaven?! Jesus _fucking_ Christ… you’re going on a diet when this is over, buddy… fuck… fuck… fuck me!” she cussed continuously as she hauled Ghost through the water towards the shore of the lake. He was a dead weight and the water filling his cowl didn’t help - creating drag and making him much heavier than he already was.  
  
The journey was slow, but eventually Sophie managed to pull him into a shallow area and sit him up against the bank with his lower half still submerged in the lake. It wasn’t until that moment - while tapping his face in an attempt to rouse him that she realised he wasn’t breathing.   
  
“Oh no…” she gasped, panic firmly taking hold. Keeping her bearings was difficult; she was exhausted, she was drenched, she was freezing cold and she couldn’t stop shivering. Her teeth clattered together and her bones quaked as she desperately fought for a clear head, failing miserably in the process.  
  
“Oh god… oh god no, Ghost… Ghost? come on! Wake up… wake up, please, please,” She was begging him, pleading with him, hoping against hope that he would simply open his eyes and start breathing. He didn’t, and she sat there between his legs, tugging on his mandibles, prying his eyes open and feverishly patting the sides of his face, unsure of what to do.   
  
“Wake up, come on! Please… don’t… don’t die, Ghost! Please, please!”  
  
She thought about chest compressions to jumpstart his lungs, but the thick, hard carapace would create an issue, and given the shape of his nose and mouth she wasn’t even sure how mouth-to-mouth would work. Even if that were a possibility, she doubted she’d have the strength to inflate his chest at all with her own shallow breaths.  
  
Out of options, she scrabbled onto the bank behind him, slipping in the mud as she went, grabbed his cowl and began to rock him forward. He was so heavy she nearly lost her grip, risking him falling face first back into the lake and she had to lurch forward to grab his horns and literally pull him back by the head. It took a few tries, but Sophie eventually got a good rhythm in rocking Ghost back and forth in the hopes the motion would be enough to encourage his body to purge whatever water he had ingested and force him to take that sweet, lifesaving breath.   
  
She exhaled with each forward motion, her arms outstretched, and her entire body braced to take his weight and bring him back, inhaling with every pull. She would whisper encouragements to him, asking him ever so politely to just breathe, to just be okay so she could get him home, that she didn’t mean what she said back in the tank, that she would cook all his meals and spoon feed them to him if only he would just breathe, just breathe. With each gentle rock, the flesh on her palms would scream against his rough carapace and it wasn’t long before she was really starting to struggle.   
  
Sophie didn’t know how long she’d been rocking him; it could have been a few seconds, it could have been a few hours, but it had been long enough. He wasn’t going to breathe – he was dead, and there was nothing else she could do.   
  
She’d lost him.  
  
She allowed Ghost’s body to slump back against the bank as she rested her head against his cowl, panting, defeated; her fingers rubbed raw from his hard, stony carapace. Even as she did this, she pleaded with him still; begged him to breathe, begged him to live in her small, quivering voice.   
  
“Please…”  
  
And she wept against him, her hands - so sore - ran along the grooves of Ghost’s back as she sobbed.   
  
“Please…”  
  
All she wanted him to do was breathe, all she wanted was to make sure he got home. She owed him this, humanity owed him this and she’d failed. Sophie couldn’t save that poor retched boy on that stage, couldn’t save the female ripped apart on that gurney, and she couldn’t save Ghost.   
  
“Please…”  
  
It had all been for nothing.   
  
“Please…”  
  
She’d failed.  
  
Suddenly Ghost’s entire body lurched, a spasm maybe, but it forced Sophie to pause mid sob - fat tears still rolling down her cheeks - and listen intently with her ear pressed against his back. There was a gurgle from within, a thick whoosh of liquid and then he lurched again, forward this time, as he purged his stomach into the water between his legs.   
  
Sophie scrambled around to his front on all fours as Ghost hacked and sputtered, trying to catch his breath in desperate, sharp, heaving gasps. He leaned forward again as he did this, seemingly attempting to crawl back into the water as he habitually tried to lie down. It was Sophie that had to coax him to lean back again, to give his lungs the room they needed for him to drag the air back into his chest. He didn’t fight her like she thought he would, but he didn’t take his eyes off of her. Those glassy purple amethysts stared at her in awe as she wept in sheer relief that he was just lying there, simply being alive.   
  
“Thank god, thank god, you’re alive, thank god, you’re alive, you’re alive, thank you, thank you.” she repeated herself over and over, customarily pawing at his face while he lay there next to her, re-educating his own lungs in the art of breathing .   
  
The moment that came next was a strange one, and the world around them seemed to simply fall away from her. Just now, it was only she and him. Right now, they were not enemies, right now it seemed neither truly knew the other at all. It was during that one moment that Ghost – his thick chest still heaving and groaning loudly with each exhale – lifted a hand and touched her cheek with twitching fingertips. He touched her with an affection she’d seen only once before back in the chamber, and he looked at her with eyes so wide it seemed he didn’t believe she was even real. They flickered over her face sporadically, but he didn’t blink, not once.   
  
Sophie made no motion to move and just let him stroke her face with his fingers, his sharp claws brushing delicately against her cold skin, while her own hands – sore and bleeding – held him against the bank. He used the same hand he had used to strangle her back in the sluice room and though the uncertainty of Ghost’s actions ran through her like a fever, Sophie did not recoil from his touch. He was establishing himself, forcing his mind to make sense of the situation, to prove to himself that he was still here, still alive, and that this tiny human was the one responsible.   
  
It was during this strange instance of contemplation that she began to notice the finer details of the turian she had just literally pulled from a watery grave. He had red markings on his brow, over the bridge of his nose and beneath each eye. Pretty little brushstrokes of crimson decorating his face that stood out, almost glowing, against the charcoal of his shell, and there were two silver rings hooped through each mandible. Each time his face-plates moved as he breathed, those rings would clink together oh so pleasantly, and it was any wonder that Sophie hadn’t noticed them before now. She surmised that she simply hadn’t had the time or mindset.   
  
Sophie hadn’t wanted to get to know him, she had no interest in being his friend. At least, not before now. Ghost had been fascinating back at the facility, like a dead animal was to a taxidermist. Her view of him was up and down at best, but he wasn’t a simple-minded machine built for killing. He was complex, with thoughts, hopes and dreams of his own and he touched her oh so gently. It was all she could do not to press her own hand against his on her face and lean into him. She hadn’t realised it before now, but she was starved for attention. Just a simple embrace from someone, anyone, would have done wonders for her then. She found herself relishing the attention Ghost was giving her in that moment.   
  
But before she could take in any more of him, Ghost allowed his hand to fall away from her as he lolled his head back into his hood and contemplated the night sky, his breathing much steadier now.   
  
Sophie had never been so glad to see a turian, least of all a live one.   
  
Ghost was obviously an exception to that rule.  
  
They both lay on the bank, partially submerged in the lake until Ghost was able to right himself and at least attempt to make their way back to the Mako on the other side of the water. It seemed the tank was just as sturdy as he was, as it still stood where it had before the shuttle hit. A little charred and the driver’s door hanging off, but it stood nonetheless.   
  


* * *

  
It turned out that purging his body of lake water had also emptied his stomach of all the food he’d wolfed down on the supply ship. Though Sophie hadn’t been at all surprised there. Ghost was big for a turian, he towered over eight feet tall as opposed to the average seven, but she was certain he’d eaten enough in that one sitting to feed at least ten of himself. It was any wonder he hadn’t spewed it all up before now.   
  
Even so, Sophie assumed that he would be hungry again considering that his body hadn’t even had the time to start fully digesting his meal before he brought it all back up in the lake.   
  
“I don’t like fish…” Ghost complained as she shoved the sticks she’d skewered in into the ground near the fire.   
  
Sophie tried not to chuckle at his grievance about the food, but she simply couldn’t resist turning her gaze on him as he sat there in a heap beneath the huge tarpaulin normally used to shelter the Mako. It was the only thing in the tank big enough to cover his bulk, and keeping Ghost warm was her top priority right now.   
  
The sight was comical, Ghost looked like an oversized child sulking about his dinner – though this was much closer to the truth than he probably would have liked to admit - and all Sophie could physically see were his eyes as they glowed in the light of the fire.   
  
“You just had a near death experience and all you can do is complain about the food?” she retorted before returning to her duty and jamming two more impaled Palavenic fish (they looked a lot like rainbow trout but with a few extra fins) into the ground to cook through. Ghost needed hot food in his belly, and without returning to the Mako this was all that was on offer.   
  
“What’s wrong with fish anyway?” She asked, not really all that curious but eager to keep on top of one of the first civilised conversations she was liable to have with the turian.   
  
“I just don’t like it. It’s too fishy…”  
  
“As opposed to fish that isn’t fishy…?”  
  
He shot her a disapproving glare with the narrowing of his eyes as though she should automatically know what he meant by the remark, and she guessed that she did to a certain degree though it seemed attempting to make light of what he’d said had gone straight over Ghost’s head. There was a definite pong to the creatures she was making him eat but again, beggars simply couldn’t be choosers.  
  
“It’s all that’s on offer. Take it or leave it because I’m not going back to the tank tonight,” Sophie said flatly.   
  
“I didn’t say I wasn’t going to eat them. I just don’t like fish.”  
  
The first of the three impaled fish in the ground were already crackling, the skin on the fish crisping up and even Sophie had to admit that Ghost’s meal smelled pretty good to her, which in turn made her stomach growl softly. She didn’t have anything on hand for herself, but she wasn’t her priority right now.   
  
Ghost reached out for this particular fish, plucked it from the ground and unfolded his maw - mandibles dropping and those needle-like teeth glinting in the light of the flames. His tongue – strange, long and thick, lolled out of his jaws as he placed the entire fish seemingly at the back of this mouth, pulled out the stick and swallowed his meal whole.   
  
He didn’t even glance her way, not once, but he knew she was watching even as he reached for the next stick.   
  
“It’s rude, even in my culture, to stare while someone is eating,” he deadpanned while repeating the process with the next stick.   
  
Sophie didn’t apologise for her actions, but she quickly looked away. She’d known turians didn’t chew their food – their teeth were not adapted for such an activity and the presence of gizzards deep in their throats made heavy suggestion to this – but it was fascinating to watch Ghost consume his meal, nonetheless.   
  
He’d eaten like something deranged back on the supply shuttle, but she guessed for a creature that was slowly dying of starvation, that the practice was pretty normal for any species.   
  
“I’d offer you some…” Ghost started, using the last fish to point at Sophie, gaining her attention once more, “… but it might make you sick.”   
  
Sophie’s gaze dropped from him to the fish in his hand, and the smile tugging at a single corner of her mouth was a difficult one to fight. The gesture was sweet; it was delivered sweeter still, and eventually the smile broadened on her lips as she lifted her eyes back to his.   
  
“Thank you, but I’m okay. I’m not hungry anyway,” she lied. She was ravenous, but very little thought had gone into this rescue mission and so picking up supplies for herself had truly been an afterthought.   
  
Ghost made a sound that resembled the trill of a cat before he turned back to the flames, pulled the tarp tighter around himself and shuffled just a little more towards the fire as Sophie settled to Ghosts far left and held out her hands to the warmth. She did so warily, her palms still sore from rocking Ghost’s heavy body not so long ago.   
  
The pair sat in silence for a while, long after Ghost had finished eating, but for the first time since this whole horrible situation manifested, the quiet was not uncomfortable. It seemed a moment of solitude and contemplation was so sorely needed by them both. That was until Sophie sensed Ghost’s eyes on her, his gaze aglow from beneath the tarpaulin.   
  
Sophie merely stared back, not knowing exactly why he was looking or even what he was looking for, but he didn’t blink, not once.   
  
“Is something the matter?” A stupid question if there ever was one but curiosity was, indeed, getting the better of her now. He was looking at her, examining her, and she wanted to know why. She was rewarded almost immediately with a response.   
  
“Why did you save me?” Ghost asked the question as though it was less a musing and more a mere statement. His voice was listless but even Sophie was able to hear the dull whine in his chest as he spoke - though right at that moment, she wasn’t able to translate the meaning of this odd sub-vocal she was beginning to notice more and more.   
  
“What do you mean?” She answered his query with yet another question, though she heard the tremor of humour hanging in her tone, unintentional in its delivery.   
  
He seemed to refocus from beneath the tarp, those expressive, beautiful eyes skimmed over her form, and they brimmed with a sadness - that hadn’t been there moments ago - so intense she swore she could feel his sorrow on her skin and it made her go cold, her flesh prickling beneath her damp clothes. She thought she might cry just looking at him—he was in pain, so much pain—and he was struggling to contain it.  
  
“You would be on your way home by now if it weren’t for me…” he paused, his gaze dropping away from hers, despondent, defeated. “… you should have let me drown.”  
  
He’d given up.   
  
He’d given up and Sophie just sat there disbelieving what he was saying to her. All that anger, all of that blind unadulterated fury he’d displayed before, the fight he had put up to just be free, that passion he’d displayed in his battle against the husks not too long ago, to just get away from them. It simply wasn’t there anymore, and he’d given up.   
  
Sophie opened her mouth to counter his statement, to remind him that he was the one who’d wanted help getting to his extraction point, but she stopped herself as she thought better of it. There was more to what she was seeing here. She didn’t even care anymore that he didn’t seem grateful for that fact that she had saved his life—not once, but twice now.   
  
He had lost everything by coming here to Shanxi; his team, his friends, and his dignity. Even she could sympathise with that; what honour was there in feeling like you owe your life to an enemy? It was strange to feel such strong empathy for a thing that had not so long ago threatened her very existence. But she felt it regardless, and it hurt her in places she never knew she had.   
  
Ghost was hurting, wounded and unable to heal, and it was that unimaginable pain and sense of utter loss and hopelessness that had bubbled and frothed to the surface. It poured out of him in waves and the crushing guilt that she was partially to blame for that squeezed painfully at her heart. He was hurting and he didn’t know how to make it stop.   
  
A moment passed between them with only the wind blowing beyond the alcove they’d chose to settle in for the evening and the crackling of the fire breaking the silence. A moment of contemplation and soul searching forced Sophie to her feet and she stepped over to the grieving turian who now stared vacantly into the flames.   
  
He was right, she could have left him to his fate, but the fact remained that she hadn’t, and there wasn’t a single space inside herself that made her wish she’d done otherwise. A life was a life, be that human or turian or not – a life was a life; a valuable thing and she would be damned if she’d have simply let him die. Her decisions were not always the wisest. Hell, the way she’d left things with James was a prime example of her snap judgements in the spur of the moment. But she would stand by them and she would stand by this one as she had done all the rest. Ghost was her priority right now, and he would remain to be so until he was safe—regardless of how the Alliance chose to punish her after the fact.   
  
She crouched before him, just as she’d done the very first time they’d met, and he looked at her with those very same eyes she’d seen back in the sluice room. Beautiful purple things they were - amethysts in the dirt - and the fire within them was dying. They no longer burned with raw emotion ; she didn’t like it not one little bit.   
  
Ghost’s gaze faltered eventually, his brow plates knitting together as he spied the bruises around her throat, and he quickly looked away. But it was that quick motion of his head that stunned her the most—so much so she had to catch her breath. There was guilt lingering there, a remorse for the damage he’d caused her, and he’d shown it by not being able to look at what he’d done. The thought made her mouth go dry and Sophie found herself scanning the grey tarp shrouding the creature sitting before her, searching—for what, she wasn’t sure—but searching nonetheless.   
  
This monster turian regretted hurting her, but the thought did nothing to bring her the comfort or closure Sophie thought it should have. Being a victim of circumstance is not the same as being a victim of abuse, and she was no victim. No one should feel shame for trying to survive.   
  
She noticed the cut on his left hand only because the blood – strange and blue - was soaking into his shroud, and habitually she reached for it noticing how violently Ghost flinched and recoiled the moment she touched him.   
  
“You’re hurt, let me see.” Her request was more a demand than anything else, but she made sure to keep her voice soft and calm. Ghost was quite clearly in a state of distress, and the last thing she wanted to do was create more.   
  
He didn’t answer; his badly injured hand retreated beneath the cover of the tarpaulin as he simply sat there, glaring at her quizzically.   
  
“I just want to help you.”  
  
“I don’t want it.”  
  
“Why?”  
  
He didn’t answer straight away. Instead, he just stared at her from beneath his pseudo-blanket with those strange purple eyes as they flickered between her throat and her face, mandibles flared in a show of his contemplation before he answered.   
  
“I don’t deserve it.” His voice, so deep and still so strange to her ears, was flat and without an ounce of feeling. He was attempting to protect himself by concealing emotions he, earlier, had no trouble displaying. There was turmoil boiling in his mind; about this Sophie had no doubts. It wasn’t a matter of whether he trusted her or not, the fact of the matter was that he didn’t want to.   
  
Even now, after all they had gone through in a mere twelve hours or so, Sophie didn’t blame him. The last humans he’d had contact with before her had killed everyone he knew. Had killed them _brutally_ ; why should he trust her at all?  
  
“Whether or not you deserve it is not up to you,” Sophie eventually retorted, careful again not to show too much change in her demeanour. Turians were still a very foreign concept to her, and after watching Ghost dance with his conflicted emotions as he shifted his bulk awkwardly beneath the tarp and struggled to maintain eye contact with her, she was still unsure what could trigger him. She held out her hand and Ghost glanced at it as though surveying the appendage as a threat before he finally revealed his injury and allowed her to grasp his fingers with her own . He was shaking, a vicious quiver she could feel in his bones as she pulled his hand and forced him to place it on her knee, his fingers so long and thick they splayed almost half way up her thigh.  
  
The wound was deep, gouged perfectly between the knuckles on the top of his hand and it bled quite steadily. The torn flesh was turning a sickly shade of purple, but it was obvious upon closer inspection that it was a superficial wound—not life-threatening. Her fingers examined him as she allowed them to run over the cool and scaly skin to assess any deeper damage to his hand. It wasn’t until she smoothed her fingertips over his knuckles that she noticed he was missing a claw . The wound there – on what she figured was his index finger – looked old, and Sophie habitually ran her thumb over the rough bump where the claw had once been.   
  
Her curiosity was piqued, and she thought about asking the obvious question, until she glanced up and saw him watching her. His eyes were bright, so bright, against the heat of the fire and it was the way he looked at her with those seemingly angry eyes that caused her to rethink her need for knowledge.  
  
Sophie quickly refocused on her original task and forced her eyes back to the wound on Ghost’s hand.   
  
“It needs suturing, or it’ll get infected,” Sophie reeled as she reached for the backpack laying nearby while still holding his hand against her knee, and retrieved a small first aid kit.   
  
The process was painful, and each time the thin needle punctured the skin, his hand would clench and pull the flesh tight. It made the job more difficult—not impossible, just difficult—but she couldn’t very well ask him to sit still as she sutured his wound with no anaesthetic. She dabbed a little of the turian brandy she’d found – not much, just a little – on the wound in an attempt to keep it clean. That process seemed to hurt more than the stitching itself.   
  
Ghost would occasionally grunt and flinch a little as she worked, and Sophie would utter a small apology for the reaction, but he didn’t recoil, so that was something. It was during this process that she thought about their day, thought about those disgusting words she’d spouted after her dream back in the tank. She felt guiltier the more her mind swept over the memory.  
  
The moment she’d completed the task, and customarily cut the suture thread with her teeth and adeptly tied it off, she stood and allowed Ghost’s hand to fall from her lap.   
“Looks good,” was all he said, dully while inspecting Sophie’s handiwork.   
  
“Not bad for a butcher, eh?” The remark was meant in jest and she smiled to reiterate that point, but the way he looked up at her regrettably, told her the joke had been somewhat lost.  
  
“Yeah, about that, I…” he started.  
  
Sophie knew exactly what he was going to say, she could hear it in the tone of his voice and in that strange sub-harmonic from deep in his throat. She didn’t want the apology, didn’t feel that she even deserved it, so she cut him off with a raised hand just as she was about to pack her kit away into the bag.   
  
“Forget it. It doesn’t matter.”   
  
“At least let me thank you...”  
  
“There’s really no need.”  
  
“But…”  
  
“Ghost, please…”  
  
“I’d be dead if it wasn’t for you. I owe you my life.” The undertone that rumbled in his chest cracked as he spoke. Though Sophie felt the change in his subvocal rather than heard it. A strange sensation, that was for sure and one that caught her off guard.  
  
Time seemed to pause at that moment; just the two of them, simply looking at each other from their places within the alcove, and it was apparent there was yet another shift in perspective. He gazed up at her from his squat on the ground, doing so with those sad purple eyes. And she stared back, registering what he’d said and compartmentalising it the best she could. It was difficult to say the very least, and eventually it was her gaze that faltered as she looked away and fondled sluggishly at the thread in her hand.   
  
“You don’t owe me anything.”  
  
It wasn’t a lie, humanity owed him so much; hell, even she did. Were it not for him, she would have been torn to shreds by those things they’d encountered. It was the least she could do to be his guide on this dank little planet. She thought back to her dream earlier that day, back to the boy still laying on his steel bed in her lab, his mother ripped to pieces in that chamber of blood and how Ghost had been so recklessly crammed into that sluice room.   
  
“For what it’s worth…” Sophie began, fighting the tears in her eyes as she forced herself to look at him again. He hadn’t moved, and simply gazed back expectantly, both mandibles twitching in what she assumed was acknowledgement.   
  
“… I’m so sorry for what we did to your team.”   
  
Sophie noted how his brow plates shifted upwards first, and then knitted together as he seemed to contemplate what she’d said. Eventually he nodded, softly, before glancing back up at her, saying with an equal softness, “Yeah … me too.”  
  
She looked away again, her mind skimming over the unpleasantness of their vicious spat back in the Mako and all of the awful things she'd said. She couldn’t leave it where it sat, she just couldn’t, not after all they’d been through these past few hours.   
  
“Listen, Ghost, about what I said in the tank, I…”  
  
“Davix.”  
  
His voice derailed her train of thought, so much so her apology for her poisonous tongue was all but forgotten, and Sophie merely stood and stared at him for the longest time until he moved his head again and looked at her with those amethyst eyes beneath his heavy brow. They were alive again, a sparkle dancing in the light of the fire deep within the shimmer of his gaze. It was nice to see, but still it rocked her off balance if only a little.  
  
“I-I’m sorry… what?” she asked, unfamiliar with the word he just spoke but hoping against hope that it was what she thought it was; a beacon, a glimmer of trust within a man who previously had none. She wasn’t wrong, and she felt her heart flutter in her chest when he spoke again.   
  
“My name, it’s …” he said, hesitating and briefly glancing away, and yet, without even seeing it, Sophie could hear the hint of a smile in his voice. “… it’s Davix .”


	5. Powder Pink

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So much thanks to RobinYourgrave for being my ever so patient beta reader on this adventure of mine. You mean the world to me, you really do!

_The light was dim, smothered by smog and she could barely see as she strolled cautiously through the lifeless wood. The trees were dead, black and rotting; the smell - so pungent, vile, corrupt - invaded her senses, blinding, suffocating. The ground beneath her feet a mere slime in a bog making purchase difficult and forcing her to hold up both arms in a desperate bid for balance._

_She was searching, for what, she didn’t quite know, but the urgency that she found whatever she was looking for was heavy on her chest, like a weight dragging her into the marsh she walked through. The sludge was cold like ice, the moisture soaking through her clothes and sticking to her skin._

_Sophie found it eventually, realising it was indeed the thing she searched for each and every night since that dreadful event, crumpled on the ground ahead of her - the boy._

_He was crying; a loud heart-breaking keen erupting from within him which only forced the urgency to get to him to froth into her gullet, her feet still struggling against the treacle beneath her feet forcing her to slip further into the bog. The air was wet and heavy, and it hung around her like filthy cotton as she reached desperately for him, that wretched small turian weeping on his knees._

_She would never reach him, this she knew. The more she ran, the more strength she poured into her legs, the further away he drifted._

_She couldn’t save him._

_He was already dead._

_And yet she reached for him still._

_Surely there was hope._

_It was all she had._

_Then he turned, so violently that the blood – thick and blue - drenching his face from the gunshot wound to his head sprayed around him; his eyes fierce, piercing._

**_Cobalt._ **

_He punctured her soul, so deep she could feel the ice of his gaze plunging into her very being. And he looked at her with such sorrow, such pain and suffering as the black sludge began to ooze from between his teeth. It rolled in thick rivers over his naked little body, caking him in filth right down to his toes. There was so much of it the marsh began to flood, to engulf her form within it as the young turian stood steadily from his crouch and watched her as she began to drown at his feet._

_His eyes, so cold now – frozen, dead - they were all she could see as the darkness crept in and the more she struggled, the more she cried the faster she sank. She would die here, and he would watch her decay in her grave of dirt._

_His eyes._

_They were so blue._

_So beautiful._

**_Cobalt._ **

-

She woke with a start and a sharp intake of breath; her body jolting, recoiling from the cold hard floor of the alcove and it was with a groan and a weary rub of her eyes that she realised she was still trapped in this reality. She surmised quickly that it was better this one than the one in her head.

How many times would her mind continue to betray her like this?

Sophie feared the nightmares would never end.

What she wouldn’t give to wish this part of her life away.

Maybe she should have ran with the rest of the scientists; retreated to Driftwood Barracks near the facility and waited to be lifted home.

Maybe she should have left the monster turian to his fate in his tiny prison.

Maybe this was the wrong decision to make.

_Maybe._

It was that very thought that forced her once again to squeeze her eyes closed and purge the delusion from her already sleep-fogged mind. The fact remained that this was the fate she’d chosen, and it was this path that she would continue to follow.

It wasn’t until she sat up that she realised she was shrouded in the Mako’s tarpaulin. Sophie pulled it away from her sharply and glared at it as though she’d never seen the thing before in her life, not recalling how or when she had ended up with it.

 _He_ must have wrapped her in it while she was sleeping, not that she actually recalled drifting into her restless sleep at all. The thought warmed her chest a little that he would do such a thing. But even then, it took a few moments; squeezing her eyes shut and rubbing them harshly with the heels of each hand before she realised that she was in the alcove alone.

Panic frothed in her gullet where she was certain relief should have been, but it was the distinctive sound of tinkering metal from the outside that caught her attention. Discarding the tarp (though she would be certain to return to the alcove for it later), Sophie got to her feet, not relishing in how her back ached and her bones cracked as she stretched into the morning light.

A lady was not used to sleeping on rocks and her body was not going to thank her for it.

It was so bright outside that she habitually squinted against the rays of Shanxi’s sun and lifted a protective arm over her eyes. Sophie took a brief moment to take in her surroundings; a beautiful expanse of land lay before her not dissimilar to the woodlands found in homeland America. So similar, in fact, she half expected a deer or even a bear to roam through the trees in the near distance.

But then she saw him; tending to the tank at the base of the alcove where they’d spent the night.

The alcove rested on an outcropping just on the edge of the wood next to the lake in full view of the Mako and down there on the green the huge turian was tinkering with the vehicle’s engine. It was quite clear that the impact of the shuttle from the evening previous had caused some major damage to it. The nose of the tank was black where the shuttle had collided with it and the driver’s side door had been completely torn off and placed flat on the grass. Sophie wouldn’t have been surprised if the damn thing was beyond repair and yet Ghost – no, _Davix_ – was still attempting to get it running again.

It occurred to her again that he had skills as an engineer, the same as the thought had washed over her mind back at Mt.Myka when he’d hot-wired the thing.

_Davix._

The name didn’t exactly roll off her tongue; it was a harsh sound and a little aggressive to even say, which Sophie found contradicted what she’d seen of him so far since their initial meeting. But his introduction caused her to see him a little differently still. Less a monster, hell, less _turian_. He was what he was; a person, a little lost, a little fragile, a little frightened.

Just like her.

And his appearance was so very different to all of those she had encountered before. Aside from his size, Sophie had noticed so many things the night previous as she’d watched him nap in the corner of the alcove. His enormous stony carapace was much thicker and higher set than what she perceived as usual, his hide a little rougher and almost scaled in comparison to what Sophie had seen before, but one thing that stood out to her more than anything was the fact that he had an extra toe on each foot. They sat higher than the main two, protruding out from near the ankle, but they had twitched as he’d slept which proved they were not superfluous by any means.

Upon their first meeting, Sophie had assumed him a mutant, or a freak of turian kind but he was so in tune with his body, it seemed, so balanced and proportioned that she began to question her own theory the more she saw.

The questions in her head were beginning to overflow about this unlikely ghost but she doubted, even now, if he would welcome her curiosity. He had only just revealed an important part of his identity to her; it was probably for the best that she didn’t push her luck.

At least for now.

She made her way down to the green, baby steps at first; her legs and lower back still aching from the chill of the cold gravelly ground of the alcove, and approached the vehicle where Davix was working. He was muttering to himself as he stood elbow deep in the engine cavity and there were strong dark smears of oil wiped on the sheet wrapped around his waist.

He certainly looked like he knew what he was doing, there was little doubt about that.

“You think you can fix it?” was all she said, in what she assumed was her indoor voice. Though it seemed the turian was so embroiled in his work, his body leapt from his spot at the sound of her voice and bashed the top of his head against the hood propped up on a spindly length of steel. It was any wonder the thing didn’t come crashing down and hit him for a second time.

The impact was quite loud, and she was certain she heard Davix emit what sounded like a honk – reminiscent of a goose – before he threw both hands to his head and whipped his entire body around to glare at Sophie comically with his angry purple eyes.

“Don’t _do_ that!” Davix wasn’t quite shouting, but it was obvious he was a little startled which forced Sophie to cover her mouth with both hands to stave off the chuckle bouncing in her throat. Though what actually surprised her the most was his demeanour; despite his displeasure of being startled, he didn’t seem displeased to see her.

Not _pleased_ , but certainly not displeased. It was better than nothing.

“I’m so sorry…” she started, unable to keep the amusement from her voice but reaching for him instinctively anyway, mindful not to touch him. “… are you alright?”

Davix was leaning against the bumper of the tank still rubbing his head, eyes closed and both mandibles flared in what Sophie could only fathom was a pained grimace while he groaned and whined pitifully deep in his chest.

“I’ll live,” was all he said dully, lowering a single hand and examining the palm, not that the blow to his head was hard enough to draw blood. Sophie had every reason to believe that the impact shocked him more than it actually _hurt_.

“Sleep well?” He asked flatly, turning again to the engine.

“No,” Sophie answered, taking the time to glance about the grassy area and noticing - rather shockingly – the Mako’s engine block was sitting at Davix’s feet.

His answer dragged her attention back to him but only momentarily with a disinterested, “Me neither.”

“Can I ask you something?” She couldn’t help herself, there was no way she was going to stand there and believe that this creature was able to just lift an engine block out of a tank that was almost taller than she was by himself and pop it on the ground.

He didn’t answer, but he did peer at her through the spaces between his strange shoulder plates until she asked her question.

“Did you lift that thing all by yourself?” Sophie, as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened, pointed to the engine block just as Davix turned at the waist and looked at her blankly. Well, at least she could only assume the stare was a blank one. It was so difficult to tell when the only means of expression a turian had was the flaps on either side of their faces.

“No,” he deadpanned, before he gestured with his head and lay his gaze on something behind her, prompting Sophie to look over her shoulder at the headless zombie turian-thing – one of the many that had attacked them the night previous - lying dead on the ground.

“He helped, but he’s resting right now. Engines are heavy.”

The brunette stood and glared at the body for the longest time until the penny finally dropped, and she found herself slowly turning her head to glower at the tall alien literally picking up the engine block in both hands – with a considerable amount of effort, the muscles in each arm rippled with the force, but picking it up regardless – and lifting both shoulders in what Sophie could fathom was a dismissive shrug.

Of course, he’d lifted the thing out himself. Who else would have helped him, Deady McDeadson behind her? She could have figured that one out on her own with or without watching him actually performing the feat as he carefully lowered the block back into the cavity.

“That’s not funny.”

 "Oh... I thought it was hilarious."

His voice was monotone - save for the second voice beneath his main one - as it was before, and Sophie couldn’t help but twist her lips together distastefully at the thought that this monstrous alien was, essentially, taking the piss out of her.

A few moments passed as Davix continued to fiddle with the engine and Sophie recovered from the burn of his jest until she stepped over to the tank and hoisted herself onto the grill to peer into the cavity. It was a mass of greased and oiled engine parts. Some of it made sense but the majority didn’t, though this was what Sophie expected to an extent. It surprised her, however, that the technology on these _‘_ modern _’_ tanks seemed more basic than she originally thought. She could very well have been gazing into her old mustang she had in her college days had she not known any better.

“What do you know about human built tanks, because only the spirits seem to know what’s wrong with this one…?”

His question came as a surprise and all she could do for the first few painful seconds that trudged by was stand there on the tanks grill and gawk at him as though she hadn’t understood a single word he said.

Had Davix, this turian, this alien lifeform who came from a planet with technologies far in advance of anything that Earth could churn up, just asked her, a mere human, for _advice_?

It wasn’t until he waved a lazy hand at her and chimed “Hello? Palaven calling…?” that she snapped out of her stupor with a soft shake of her head.

“I’m sorry, what?” it was just easier if she asked him to repeat himself than register just how awkward that moment had been, and she did so through squinted eyes.

Davix turned his head to face the engine cavity once more though not without giving her a sideways glance with those purple eyes of his which was a painful indication that he thought she was quite strange. But even with that odd look he shot at her, Davix explained himself for a second time, though Sophie was quite pleasantly surprised that his tone was devoid of annoyance.

“I’ve been working on this most of the morning. But it just won’t turn over. I’m not used to human tech. I know I’m missing something, but I can’t see what.” He guided Sophie’s gaze into the cavity with a pointed claw and tapped on a component attached to the engine.

“I’ve reattached this thing, but I’m not sure what it does so…”

“That’s the head gasket.”

The was a pause as the huge black turian looked at her, both mandibles twitching comically as he seemed to process what she’d said.

“A what…?”

“Head gasket.”

“What’s a _head gasket_?”

He sounded genuinely confused and the way he said _‘head gasket’_ was as though he struggled to even pronounce it which almost brought a smile to Sophie’s lips. Almost but not quite though the grin battling there at the corners of her mouth was a hard one to beat down.

It probably wasn’t the best idea to laugh at the turian’s ignorance. It wasn’t his fault.

“Expensive, is what it is…” she started sarcastically and with a knowing glare in Davix’s direction as though he should know what she was talking about, recalling the bill from the many gaskets she’d had to replace over the years of owning a car back in California.

“It’s just a gasket that separates coolant and combustion gases, the tank probably won’t run if it’s not connected properly or if it’s broken. It looks fine to me though, maybe you have some of the lines mixed up?” She reeled with a shrug, though it seemed Davix wasn’t all that impressed with the answer. His brow was much lower than it was before and his mandibles were pressed tightly to his face as he shook his head and dove back into the cavity to look again at the gasket.

“Humans are so primitive. Take all of that _shit_ out, and all of this… _mess_ …” he held up a bunch of tubes, vigorously shaking them; he was obviously still reconnecting to the engine at Sophie, though not aggressively. “… replace it all with a simple eezo combustion core and this job would have been done yesterday.”

She was aware of element zero and just how important it was in the fundamentals of up and coming Earthen technology, but it was rare, expensive and, as far as Sophie knew, rather dangerous. Reports of strange mutations within newborns and young children were getting increasingly common since the discovery of element zero. Either way, rather than have Davix explain exactly what he was talking about she merely humoured his knowledge with a roll of the eyes before she decided to question his logic.

“Sure, okay, and where are we gonna get our hands on one of these eezo combustion cores?”

Sophie presented the expanse of land to Davix with an open palm, who even turned to look.

“I don’t see any just lying around, do you? Or, maybe your friend over there…” she pointed at the dead turian husk from earlier, “… could go pick one up for us. After his nap, of course.”

She chuckled at herself even as her turian travelling companion propped himself up against the tank with both hands and seemed to glower at her from beneath his heavy brow, the rings in his mandibles clinking together so lightly in the breeze as he did so.

“What?” she hunched her shoulders innocently “I can be funny too.”

Sophie watched amusedly as he turned his attention back to the engine, and it was then that she saw the pistol sticking out of the sheet he wore around his waist.

“Look after that gun, won’t you?” She said quietly as she folded her arms across the lip of the engine cavity, focusing her attention on Davix’s work. She only barely noticed that he was even looking at her as she spoke.

“My father gave it to me before I came here. I’d like it back when this is all over…”

* * *

There was something about her that he liked, something strange and fluttering in the pit of his stomach and the feeling bugged him immensely. Davix wasn’t sure exactly what that thing was, or why he even thought it, but it was there nonetheless and even he knew there was little he could do about it. Attempting to fight against it would create a rift he could very well do without. Sophie was his key back to Palaven and keeping on friendly terms with her was far better than the alternative.

Maybe it was her sense of humour, maybe it was the fact that she’d saved his life not once but twice now, or maybe it was something much simpler like the way her hair hung over her shoulders. He wasn’t sure, and he didn’t like that fact. There was nothing worse than losing control of one’s thought processes.

There was something he liked about her, and the thought irked him. Humans were disgusting, vile creatures, what made this one so different? The fact of the matter was that she _was_ different; she wasn’t this faceless enemy, an alien force to be reckoned with. She was a small – albeit strong, if her skill with that pheaston was anything to go by – female who’d put her own needs aside for his.

_Why…?_

It was a question he couldn’t answer alone, and one he was reluctant to ask so he chose, instead, to focus on the tank. It went without saying that Davix was astonished by how well the box had held up against the imperial shuttle. The damage it had caused was surprisingly superficial though the engine had somehow become disconnected from the main body of the Mako. This could have very well been down to the poor design of the engine itself. Or perhaps just simply because it had stood for so long with little to no movement.

Vehicles were not designed as show pieces or to sit idle, they were designed to be driven and not doing so damaged them sometimes beyond any sort of repair. The Mako may have been of human design, but the tank was fascinating; a window into the minds of the alien engineer who’d designed her and the mechanics who’d built her. She handled like a brick and the breaks left a lot to be desired, but these factors were both things Davix could, overall, quite happily ignore.

Still, he could very well teach the humans a thing or two about eezo combustors and the importance of clean fuel, but that was a topic for another time.

There was an affinity Davix had with vehicles, a passion passed down to him by his father who worked on vintage street cruisers in his workshop back home. A simpler, happier time when he was allowed to tinker on his father’s projects and learn at his own pace.

He hadn’t been brought here to fight. Davix was no soldier, not really; it was a weakness in the gaze of the Hierarchy, in the eyes of turian-kind. It was rare he didn’t feel like a humongous triangular peg being driven into a very small round hole. He did not fit the typical turian mould and he would be lying to himself if he said it didn’t bother him.

There was no denying that he was the best at his craft; there was no engineer with fingers as deft and eyes as keen as Davix Fedorian on the whole of Palaven. He was never short of commissions and rebuilding projects but he was no real fighter. He’d been brought to Shanxi to fix and maintain and he was thrust into the field due to nothing other than sheer desperation to occupy a planet that was trying to kill them.  

His original unit consisted of a team of engineers under his command though removed from their postings and repurposed as soldiers – a job they simply were not qualified for. With Rappi – his second in command and voice of reason in a troubled time - long dead back at the human testing facility, he was unsure if the rest of them were even still alive at this point. The thought that he would never see them again made his heart ache.

An hour or so passed as he worked in silence, and the little brown-haired human watched intently with her shocking blue eyes. He didn’t really mind that she was interested; Davix guessed it must be rather fascinating to watch a turian struggle with the mere concept of primitive human tech. But he worked on, showing her that he loved and knew his craft well and before he realised it, the engine was secured in its cavity and reconnected to the tank.

“Is there anything I can do?” Sophie’s voice was quiet but genuine, and the way her wide eyes gazed at him showed her intent to help. Perhaps the reason he liked her was none of the aforementioned things – her sense of humour, her selflessness or her hair - perhaps it was simply because she was just so pleasant. Pleasant in personality and pleasant on the eyes.

Maybe his tainted view of the human race wasn’t all that accurate after all.

Maybe Sophie was indeed the exception to the rule.

Davix flicked a single mandible towards her in acceptance of her aid before he answered softly, “You could try the ignition if you want, see if she turns over?”

He was careful to keep his voice low and inline with his subvocals, it wouldn’t do to mistake his pleasure of such a simple thought of her to be misconstrued as anything else. The less emotion he displayed this way was probably the best for both of them.

Communicating with aliens was just not as simple as a translator in the brain made it seem. Most, if not all Citadel species knew the common courtesies of their fellow species. Davix knew a slow bow was a respectful way to greet an asari, the same as a sharp upward flick of the hand was the worst type of insulting gesture to a salarian.

Humans knew nothing outside of their own.

But then again, turians knew little more about humans.

Sophie didn’t hesitate to honour his request, and she dropped from the nose of the tank before hoisting her small frame into the driver’s seat. He watched her go and waited for the tell-tale click of the ignition to show the engine was indeed damaged beyond repair.

It would be just his luck if the tank had to be abandoned so early into their already problematic journey.

That tell-tale click never came, and instead the engine roared to life beneath him. The violent rumble that rattled the frame of the tank had to be the most beautiful sound Davix had ever heard and he couldn’t help but twitter delightfully in his throat, both mandibles flared in a joyous grin.

“See, _this_ is why I’m the best engineer on Palaven,” he gloated, though only to himself. He didn’t want Sophie to think him narcissistic.

Slamming the hood shut and wiping his oil slicked hands on the rump of his bed sheet – spirits knew he needed some proper clothes and soon – he quickly made his way over to the driver’s side and ushered the human inside to shuffle over and allow him to enter.

“What about the door?” She asked, seemingly bewildered about the fact that they were about to leave the driver’s side door behind. He'd torn the thing from its hinges even before he'd attempted to fix the engine. 

He couldn’t help the chuckle that bounced out of his chest as he first glanced at the door still laying in the grass before turning his gaze on Sophie who quizzically looked back. If she thought he would have the broken door flapping in the wind as they drove towards Lycan’s Point then she was very much mistaken.

“Listen, I can lug heavy engine blocks around by myself, I can even fix primitive human tanks with no tools other than my hands. Welding doors back onto their hinges without a welding iron…?” Davix shook his head at her, arching a single brow plate as he did so. “… I’m a skilled engineer, I’m not a magician.”

With that said, he shoved the gear stick into position and pulled the tank away from its resting spot, not quite relishing the way the vehicle bounced over the dead turian-husk as they went.

* * *

“You need to start veering to the west,” Sophie was nothing but a map it seemed. Very little conversation had passed between them as they’d embarked on this part of their journey. It was a little depressing really, though it seemed there wasn’t much to talk about and they’d been travelling for the best part of three hours.

She thought about broaching her questions, new ones constantly popping up in her head to be stored in the archives of her brain never to be looked at again, just for the sake of conversation. Davix seemed friendly enough now they’d both gotten over their initial shock forced on them both by the horrors of Mt.Myka (though the term gotten over was one to be used very loosely), but he was still an alien when all was said and done.

She had claimed to be a turian expert, one of the best scientific minds in her field, and having met this very turian, the Ghost - _Davix_ \- she was forced to realise that she knew very little of these beings. The gestures and sounds being directed at her were, indeed, alien to her and oh so fascinating beyond any reasonable comprehension.

And yet she still lacked the courage to simply ask. So she sat there in her seat, a projected map of Shanxi’s dirt roads displayed on the dashboard from her omni tool. The aim of their journey was simple—avoid all human settlements where possible.

“Why the west?” Davix asked flatly, though even she noticed that given the way the tank began to shift westward he wasn’t protesting Sophie's logic.

“Alliance Naval barracks are about three hundred kilometres ahead. I know they’re manned because I stayed there for a couple of days when I first arrived. East will lead us deeper into Alliance territory, the west remains unclaimed.”

She watched him nod his head slowly, though with his attention squared mostly on the road ahead she wasn’t sure if he was truly listening. Not that it mattered, anything to break the tedium. Though the reprieve didn’t last as almost as soon as that conversation started it had ended and the pair of them settled once again into an unsettling silence that hung in the tank like a damp cloth.

That was until Sophie’s stomach decided to chip in with its ten cents. The loud gurgle all but filled the tank and forced Davix to suddenly look at her, a single brow plate tilting in confusion as both mandibles twitched, oddly.

“What was that?” his question had barely left his mouth when the sound came again and Sophie had to physically grimace against the discomfort brought on by her raging hunger. It was answer enough it seemed, as the tank drifted to a slow stop.

“You’re hungry.” He spoke flatly as he began to manoeuvre the vehical towards the bordering woodland.

“No, it’s fine honestly,” Sophie assured him, though assuaging his worry with a lie but the way Davix looked at her when she spoke heavily suggested that he knew it was a lie. She hadn’t eaten in days, to say she was ravenous was an understatement. But the last thing she wanted to become was a burden—she was supposed to be useful.

The tank slowly drifted to a stop between the trees before Davix turned to look at her, gesturing to the back of the tank with a quick tilt of his head.

“I caught some fish this morning out of the lake. I can’t eat them, they’ll make me sick, but I assumed you can…?”

Sophie was astonished to say the least. She hadn’t asked him for food, hadn’t told him she was even hungry until now. Hell, she'd actively turned down the dextro fish he offered the night previous. But the gesture was sweet, just as it was the night before, and delivered sweeter still that she was lost for words over this creature’s sheer courtesy.

The fact that he had thought about her well being without any prompt, the fact that he had thought about her at all, that she somehow _mattered_ to him was something she hadn’t felt for a long time. It had been so long since she had truly mattered to anyone. It felt so nice, like a warm fire in her belly, that someone cared, bethat for their own benefit, right now it didn't really matter. 

“Y-you didn’t have to…” she started just as Davix exited the vehicle. There was a flutter in her chest as he turned and fixed her with those strange, beautiful purple eyes of his.

“I think after the way I’ve behaved and what you’ve done for me it was the least I could do.” Davix’s voice was soft, softer than she’d ever heard it before, and the low whine that usually echoed his voice deep in his throat had been replaced by a melodic thrum that Sophie could feel more than hear. And yet there was a sadness to his tone, one she found difficult to ignore coupled with his statement _‘the way I’ve behaved.’_

She knew exactly what he was referring to, though she waited for his gaze to shift and turn away from the tank before she lifted a hand to her throat and gingerly touched herself there.

The flesh was still tender.

Healing.

But tender.

* * *

The trade-off was fair enough; Davix collected the wood and started the fire burning, while Sophie prepared the food. It was an unspoken routine the pair had found themselves in since the night previous and there was little doubt in Sophie’s mind that it would change any time soon.

Not that it really mattered. The method seemed to work for them for now and having ransacked the rear of the Mako, Sophie had salvaged a small field kit that just so happened to include a couple of cooking pans to prepare their meal as the evening began to set in. She’d selected a couple of packets for Davix containing what looked remarkably like rump steaks – though instead of red they were a strange purple colour, and Davix had assured her its hue was perfectly normal for the animal of origin. A thing she couldn’t pronounce, but sounded like an odd cross between a cow and an alligator.

Palaven sounded like a scary place inhabited by even scarier creatures it seemed.

Davix had constructed a cradle from thick bits of wood for the pans to sit in and the pair sat and waited patiently for their meal in a heavy silence. The more the quiet dragged on the more Sophie’s bored mind would remind her again of her awful nightmare that morning.

“What was his name?” she asked eventually, out of the blue, out of context and the confused furrow to the turian’s brow only solidified his need for more information as he gazed at her questioningly. She simply sat there, huddled against her knees as she blankly gazed back.

“Who?” His reply was flat, and he leaned towards his pan and poked the meat inside around with a peeled twig.

“The boy. The one we killed at the facility…” she watched as Davix paused mid action, mandibles twitching outwards initially before he pulled them tight to his face with such force Sophie was certain she heard them clap against his mouth. “… what was his name?”

Davix didn’t move an inch but his eyes flickered her way and fixed her with an intense stare as though he was surveying her for a threat before he gave up any information.

She was relieved when his body loosened, and Davix leaned back onto a single hand with a despondent sigh and the answer she sought.

“Ruban.” That was all he said at first, his gaze floating over the fire for the longest moment before he clicked his tongue and lifted his eyes back to her, a sadness lingering within them, a sadness she was seeing more and more.

“He was a good kid.” He nodded and seemed to hum fondly, deep in his chest as he continued, “… shy but really good with numbers. He didn’t deserve to die the way he did. He never hurt anyone in his life.” 

The silence returned as Sophie took in what her travelling companion was saying. It was strange that the turian she’d seen on the stage, the child Dowell had tortured and killed without an ounce of remorse finally had a name.

“ _Ruban_ …” she repeated listlessly while she hugged her knees closer to her chest, contemplating how his name felt on her tongue.

“Are you okay, Sophie?”

Davix’s voice seemed so far away despite how close he was; Sophie was certain he was closer to her now than he was moments ago, and it took a few seconds for her to react as she saw him reach for her when she didn’t respond right away. The moment she acknowledged the proximity, he sharply lowered his hand to the ground.

“No, I’m not okay,” She answered honestly though she was speaking long before her brain had even registered the words.

Davix didn’t respond, but she was certain he shuffled closer still and he looked at her with those intense eyes, his mandibles hitching lightly on either side of his face and the rings hooped though them glinting in the light of the fire.

She had started and Davix was listening, there wasn’t any going back now.

“I tried to save him, you know. _Tried_ …” Sophie could see the event playing in her mind again, though when she closed her eyes in an attempt to quell the memory, the vision of that terrible event intensified. The way the boy crumpled to the floor of the stage, the black filth oozing out of his mouth – she could still smell the putrid soil the humans had forced down his throat. But most of all, his eyes still shone in the darkness of her subconscious.

They were so beautiful.

So blue.

_Cobalt._

“He still stares at me… every night. He won’t look away… he won’t look away…” Sophie wasn’t quite aware that she was trembling, or that Davix was even there right now as she found herself lost deep within her own awful failure. She feared the event would stay with her until the day she drew her last breath. The death of that poor, wretched child was scorched into her heart.

That was until Davix’s voice, so deep, flanged and gorgeous brought her back before the flames.

“It wasn’t your fault.”

She didn’t answer, instead sitting there, gazing at him almost in disbelief of what he said, that he didn’t blame _her_ for the actions of her entire team. Eventually, after giving his food another poke with his twig, Davix cared to continue though he struggled to look at her as he spoke.

“It won’t be of any consolation, but Ruban was already very sick before we were captured. He had…” Davix shrugged, albeit dismissively. “… a week left, if that. I don’t think we could have saved him at that point even if we’d found food to give him. He was too far gone…”

Sophie saw Davix swallow hard, as though he was holding onto himself but it was clear that talking about Ruban was painful, the dull whine in his chest returned and it only intensified as he spoke again but what Davix said next would stay with her until the end of time. Her one and only thing to hold on to just to ease the guilt of what happened that day, if only a little.

“But I _knew_ Ruban, and I know that it would break his heart if _he_ knew how much he’s hurting you…”

Sophie didn’t have any words to give him, the suffering she’d put herself through merely thinking about the young turian and just how much he’d suffered before being paraded like some circus animal no longer seemed justified. But she found herself feeling the guilt crushing her heart each and every night either way. It reached the point that she dreaded sleep.

“I’m sorry,” was all she could muster in the smallest of voices, not even noticing Davix reaching into her pan and plucking a fish he caught for her from it, skewering it on one of his peeled twigs.

“You shouldn’t apologise for the actions of others,” Davix responded somewhat coolly, but not without that thrum in his throat that she could feel more than hear and she gazed up at him as he offered her the stick in his hand; she took it with a grateful nod of her head.

It was nice to know that not all turians were evil killing machines out for human blood, but Davix was proof of this already. He’d shown her nothing but compassion since she’d pulled him out of the lake. Perhaps he was thankful for his life; she hoped so, though not for selfish reasons. There was no way Sophie would let that factor hang over him. But it was also nice to know that the boy, despite his death and the way in which he died, had a soft soul, much like the alien eating his meal beside her.

* * *

Shanxi’s sun had long set on the horizon and the two moons hung in the sky like lanterns, acting as the only true source of light as they drove across the dirt path and veering still to the west to avoid the human settlements. The night air billowed into the tank as they went and Davix thought idly if the tarpaulin would be enough make into a makeshift door.

Being a rocky turian – a race of Palaveni origin adapted for harsh mountain climates – meant he didn’t feel the cold in the same sense as the most common of his people, but he was definitely feeling the chill this time. He could feel the cold in his bones.

Davix hadn’t asked to see her map. Sophie hadn’t lied to him yet and had fought for his sake so right at this moment in time he felt he had no real reason to mistrust her. She had a pheaston rifle still at her disposal that lay next to her on her side of the tank, if she had wanted to blow him away, he as quite certain that she would have done so by now.

They had travelled mostly in silence before and since their meal and though at times he wanted to fill it with something - _anything_ – it gave him time to mull over Sophie’s confession back at the fire site.

He hadn’t known she had witnessed Ruban’s execution, let alone how deeply it was affecting her. It went without saying that he was a little jarred by the fact that she’d let something like that chew away at her subconscious, though it explained her restless sleep, at least for the most part.

It was comforting, in a rather morbid way that he wasn’t alone in his grief. Witnessing Ruban’s torture was bad enough, but to know the company he kept was touched by the events as much as he had been was something he felt he should probably hang on to.

Eventually it was Sophie who broke the silence, having spent the past thirty minutes or so simply staring out of the passenger side viewing port.

“I love the pink mountain flowers here.” Her voice was little more than a mutter and with the wind blowing into the vehicle, Davix was struggling to hear her.

“What?”

“The flowers, look. They’re so pretty, they remind me of the fields back home.”

She rapped a finger – humans had far too many fingers, what in the spirits name did they even use them all for anyway? – on her viewing port and Davix saw them; rows upon rows of powder pink flowers rushing by them as they drove alongside the field.

They glowed eerily in the moonlight and he slowed the tank, if only to appreciate the view.

Shanxi was a death trap, a poisonous place and it went without saying that he simply couldn’t wait to leave; to leave this part of his life behind and forget it ever happened. But looking out at those flowers, so small and delicate, so prim and beautiful…

_Like her._

The initial thought was derailed, and it crashed in his head as he momentarily lost control of the tank, the entire vehicle veering to the left before he refocused and swerved the tank back on its original path. It took Davix a moment to realise he was actually panting before he heard the girl speak from her side of the tank.

“What the _hell_ was that?” Sophie asked, her voice strained and a little panicked as she sat bolt upright in her seat. He could feel her eyes on him, those pretty blue things in her head staring through him as he struggled to find his composure and search his addled mind for a lie.

“S-stones…” he managed to splutter out of his stupid mouth, it took all he had not to roll his eyes at himself even as he heard Sophie repeat what he’d just said.

“Stones…?” she quizzed, her gaze still burning the side of his head. As long as he didn’t look at her right at this moment in time, all was not lost. He was awful at lying, but she didn’t need to know that.

“Yeah, stones. In the road…” he didn’t turn her way but he presented the path ahead of them with the open palm of his own hand as though his explanation was the answer to all of life’s problems right then. Eventually he saw Sophie shake her head and reposition herself against the viewing port.

Davix sighed inwardly in pure relief when she lost interest in him and turned back to the flowers. It wouldn’t do for her to see him untangling the way he was, but he was struggling to stop it from happening. The more he tried to ignore it, the more intense it would become.

He was falling.

Fast.

And hard.

He wasn’t sure when the chain reaction had started, though he was quite certain it was the moment he’d regained consciousness after almost drowning in the lake the day previous, but his attraction towards the human was becoming a little stupid.

The long lingering gazes he stole, his desire to touch her hair and skin again the way he had in the water. He shouldn’t feel like this, least of all towards a _human._ Davix found himself dwelling on these thoughts far more than he cared for, and more often than not he wasn’t even aware he was daydreaming until he was interrupted in some way.

He had little time to dwell on this one, however, when the distinctive chime of an omni-tool signal receiver filled the silence save of for the rumble of the tank engine.

It was Sophie’s, her version of the device was primitive and seemingly experimental, but the thing flashed and chimed on her wrist and she looked at it quizzically before shifting her confused gaze to Davix who simply stared back with equal bewilderment. He was quite certain he'd encrypted the thing to prevent tracking when he reactivated her translator back at that facility.

The pair stared at each other for a while, neither really sure of what to do until Davix eventually shrugged at her. If the human Alliance military had found her then there was no use simply ignoring the transmition coming through, there was every chance the call and the encrypted tracking were unrelated.

She took the shrug as permission to answer, not that she really needed Davix’s permission to do so, and she clicked the receive option on the device.

“Hello?” she called somewhat gingerly.

 _“Hello?! He-hello?! Sophie?! Sophie, is that you? You’re alive?!”_ The voice crackled through the disturbance given off from the device which was a little painful to Davix’s ears and considering how Sophie was wincing against the noise; it seemed she struggled with it too.

“Richard?” she mumbled the name at first, and Davix was certain he recognised it, though from where he wasn’t certain but he had most definitely heard it before.

“Oh my god, Richard! Richard, Hi! How are you? Where are you now? Is everyone okay?” she chimed excitedly while she gripped her wrist intently and bounced in her seat. It was the first time he’d ever seen a genuine smile form on her face. Not one borne of sympathy or pity, but a pure, innocent happiness that lit her entire face up in the most delightful way.

He forced himself to look away.

He shouldn’t be feeling like this.

He just shouldn’t.

_“You still with that monster? I’m surprised he hasn’t eaten you yet.”_

It was then that Davix remembered where he'd heard the name before, the shame washed over him like a wave as he recalled the brief fight with the human male back at the human testing facility. He didn’t shift his gaze from the road ahead, but he did glower though mostly at himself even as Sophie ghosted her eyes over him somewhat sheepishly. He knew there had been another with Sophie when they’d released him from his tiny prison, but he wasn’t certain if he’d killed him in his blind, terror fuelled rage.

He was at least little thankful he didn’t have that life smeared on his hands.

“Yeah, but he’s not as bad as all that…” it was a mild relief that Sophie almost corrected the man on the other side of the line, almost, but not quite. “…listen, Richard, did you deliver the co-ordinates? Is everyone alright? What happened to…”

_“We can’t trust the Alliance.”_

“What do you mean?”

_“Myka ain’t there no more, Sophie. It’s gone. They came in and destroyed it. They’re hiding it, ma’am.”_

Davix was certain the term ‘Myka’ was in reference to the testing facility. He hadn’t bothered to learn its name. Though the more he listened to the conversation the more he noticed the colour literally draining from Sophie’s face. This was news she had not wanted to hear.

“Richard…?”

_“Ma’am, with all due respect this isn’t why I’m calling. You need to go home.”_

She laughed, causing Davix to glance at her momentarily.

“What? I’m sorta tied up here, Richard. I can’t just leave.”

_“It’s your dad…”_

“What about him…?”

_“I thought it was rumour at first, s’why I didn’t call sooner. I did some diggin’…”_

“Richard!” her voice was shrill, a little panicked, but her command rendered the caller silent, the only noise being the rumble of the tank and the crackle of Sophie’s omni-tool.

_“He had a heart attack two days ago. He ... H-he didn’t make it…”_

The atmosphere in the tank thickened suddenly and Davix felt his own eyes close at the news of what was happening to that poor girl sitting next to him. He dared to glance her way, noting how her hands now rested on her lap as she stared blankly, straight ahead just as Richard spoke again.

_“I’m so sorry, ma’am. I’m so sorry.”_

She seemed to gather herself then, hooking her hair behind an ear and clearing her throat before she answered clearly but with a definite quiver to her voice.

“Thank you. But I won’t be going home. I have a mission to complete.”

_“Yes, ma’am…”_

The transmission ended there with an abrupt click and Sophie slumped into her chair. Davix half expected her to keen, to cry out in pain and anguish but she didn’t. She simply sat there in a heap in her seat, despondent and deflated like the life had just been sucked out of her small body. He wanted to say something, but the words wouldn’t come. The best he could do was find a suitable place to park up.

Their journey would end here for the evening.

It was the best he could offer for now.

* * *

Sophie wasn’t entirely sure why they’d stopped, though she was grateful they had. She needed the air, to be able to breathe and Davix chose an outcrop to park up. A beautiful woodland spread beneath the range like a blanket.

It was here she made her seat while the turian dealt with the Mako.

It was strange how grief affected people. She should be crying, sobbing, getting angry at the galaxy for taking her one and only link to Earth away from her. Screaming that she hadn’t been there in her father’s last moments.

To say goodbye.

The thought that he’d died thinking his only child was a traitor to the Alliance military was agony. A vile brick rotting in her stomach. Perhaps it was that realisation that had been the final straw.

His death was her fault.

It was her fault. 

It was _all_ her fault.

But instead she just sat there, hugging her legs against her chest and staring up at the stars. There was no comfort there, deep within this alien sky, those stars were not the same ones as those she saw on Earth.

This was not the same sky.

Sophie wasn’t angry, it didn’t hurt, she felt nothing. She was hollow, _numb_.

Heavy footfalls approached from behind though she didn’t bother to turn and acknowledge Davix as he carefully sat next to her on the edge of the rockface. He had so much grace about him, such fluidity to his movements, contradicting his sheer size.

A supernova as light as a feather.

She could see him looking at her out of the corner of her eyes. That strange amethyst gaze of his penetrating her, sinking into her skin – she could feel it burning her flesh, but it was not enough for her to turn and connect her gaze with his.

Eventually he looked away, his sights falling into the night sky, seemingly searching for what he assumed Sophie was looking for. It was his voice, so deep, flanged, _gorgeous_ , that filled the void.

“I remember when my mom died…” he started softly, dragging Sophie’s attention to the soft rumble in his chest as he spoke. She’d heard the sound before, had _felt_ it, but she still struggled to decipher its meaning; she hadn’t wanted to ask at the risk of seeming ignorant. He continued once he realised that she was almost peering at him out of the corner of her eye—almost, but not quite—as her gaze rested firmly on the ground at his side.

“… I was only three. Heh, I was a little bit smaller then.” He chuckled softly at himself. The sound was sad, forlorn. It made Sophie’s chest ache to hear it. She noticed it more and more as time had dragged on. Davix lacked self-esteem. He didn’t like what he was and how he appeared to others. It was sad to see that, to know that about him. It was funny to think that she picked up on this within the very brief conversations they had since they met. And yet it wasn’t until this moment that she took the time to truly appreciate _what_ he was. Davix simply didn’t know just how _beautiful_ he was to look at. So regal and intense and _strong_ , handsome like a dragon.

It was so clear he didn’t see what she saw, even if the sight was only just becoming so clear.

His self-depreciation was so very _human_ to her. She wondered briefly if her attitude had come across as so very _turian_ to him at any point. The thought was fleeting as she listened to him continue his story.

“I remember the day, lots of rushing about, crying… but I don’t remember her, not really. And yet the hole she left behind is still there…”

His voice dulled as he spoke but the song in his chest raised an octave, so much so that Sophie turned to look at him. Davix was no longer gazing at the sky, instead transfixed with the canopy beneath their feet. She watched as he lifted a single hand and placed his palm against his chest. His two fingers pulled at the carapace, causing his talons to drag against the hard shell and clink against the claw he wore around his neck. The claw that was missing from his left hand, she'd mused.

“…it’s still sore even now, gaping… there’s no pain like it.”

He was lost within that harsh grip of sorrow he still felt after all of these years from the loss of his mother, and never before had Sophie felt such a connection to the turian seated next to her. He was attempting to relate to her, though it seemed he was unsure if the attempt was successful when he realised Sophie was watching him, and his composure quickly returned.

“Spirits… I’m not really helping am I…?” He chuckled again, mandibles flickering, that same unhappy sound from before as he leaned back on both hands and lowered his gaze from hers, though only momentarily.

Sophie simply smiled in response, her lips knitted together in a bid to prevent them trembling and nodded softly to show that what he was saying wasn’t falling on deaf ears. He knew her pain, he _knew_ that agony because he had lived it himself; was _still_ living it. It was comforting in a sort of shallow way that she wasn’t alone in her grief.

A moment passed between them, only a moment until Davix shifted his head, his gaze faltering back to the canopy before he broke the silence.

“I’m sorry about your father, Sophie. Truly, I am.”

His words were like honey dripping from his tongue; so soft, so sweet and so sad and with such feeling that it was at that moment Sophie, with a soft whimper, felt her heart crack and shatter in her chest. Hearing Davix say it, _confirming_ her father’s death made it all so real and her sorrow burst from within—a silent scream as the tears came, hot unrelenting, burning her skin.

She couldn’t stop it.

She couldn’t stop.

She promised herself she wouldn’t cry in front of the Ghost, in front of Davix.

She couldn’t stop it.

And she sat there on the cliff edge and choked on her sobs. Her ribs wracked against the sheer force of her cries, fingers twisted painfully in her hair in unadulterated frustration.

It wasn’t fair.

It just wasn’t fair.

When would it end?

It wasn’t fair.

Everything that had happened within the past few days bubbled to the surface, boiling over in her angry cries as they echoed into the wilderness below. One foul mess after another ghosted into her memory; the bodies she’d destroyed, her ruined career, Ruban, Mt.Myka, father, it was too much.

Too much

She was being ripped apart from the inside and the pain from it all was so intense, so fierce, she lacked the strength to fight against him when Davix reached out and pulled her into an embrace with his strong, three-pronged hands wrapped around each wrist.

He didn’t speak as he gathered her up in his arms weaving a hand though her hair, so strong, so soft, so gentle. But he sang, he sang to her. That same sound from before, the one she couldn’t quite translate. He sang so sweetly—a soothing song like the twittering of birds in Earth’s trees, and his chest rumbled like a brook deep in the woods. His scent was pungent, intoxicating and reminded her of hot winter spices. Davix was familiar, warm, inviting, comforting and everything he brought with him reminded her of home, so she allowed herself this. Sophie succumbed to the embrace, succumbed to Davix, and allowed herself to lose her senses deep within him.

To pretend that he cared.

Just once.

Just this once.

* * *

Sophie didn’t wake locked in the arms of a turian. Instead she had been carefully placed back into the passenger seat of the Mako, the scratchy blanket tucked around her body a little too tightly perhaps but in a way that suggested that she hadn’t done it herself. Was it strange to feel disappointed that Davix wasn’t the first thing she saw when she opened her eyes?

She wasn’t sure, but the thought wasn’t unwelcome—that much she knew.

She physically shook the thought from her head, though she wasn’t quite perturbed by the fact that she could very well look upon a friendly face right about now. Davix was, indeed, as friendly as they came.  

She lay there for a while, pondering the events leading right up until this point. Ruban’s death—his mother’s too—and how it affected both herself and Davix so deeply, the husks back at the lake the Alliance’s betrayal and the notification of the death of her father back on Earth.

It was all getting to be a little too much, and yet she had come so far, ruined her career, destroyed her reputation as a human being, all for the sake of doing _the right thing_. She couldn’t stop now if she was ever going to redeem herself, ever going to expose Pegasus for their crimes – the Alliance for hiding such an infection in its bowels.

She was stronger than the woman she had been before.

Father would forgive her.

He would.

The Alliance, however, could _burn_.

She sat up eventually, head throbbing – possibly a little dehydrated from all of the tears shed before – causing her to rub at her temples tentatively. It was then - as she turned towards the driver’s side of the vehicle - that she saw it, the gasp that left her lungs catching in her throat at the mere sight of it.

Her father’s gun—the last thing he gave to her before she left Earth lay on Davix’s seat. The only shred of humanity she had left. But it wasn’t the pistol that drew her attention. Laying on top of it, so perfect and pretty and so carefully placed were two freshly picked mountain flowers.

They were powder pink in colour, so delicate, even from where she was sitting on the other side of the tank she could smell the sweet strawberry scent they gave off. She reached for them, leaving the pistol where it lay. Carefully plucking the flowers into her palm, she marvelled at the gesture as she held them close to her chest.

Sophie told Davix a lot of personal things that day, how Ruban’s death continued to eat her alive.

How she wanted the gun back at the end of their adventure.

But she forgot telling him how the pretty mountain flowers here on Shanxi reminded her of the fields near her home in California.

_He remembered._

_He **cared**._

She had to see him.

Quickly, she unravelled herself from the blanket and carefully placing her pretty pink flowers on the dashboard of the tank, opened the door and stepped out into the night. She stood there against the tank for a moment, just staring into the wilderness, unsure of how she was supposed to find the turian who so sweetly comforted her not so long ago. He couldn’t be far away, surely. That was until she turned and found him on the roof of the tank.

Davix was just sitting there, comfortably leaning his curved back against the hinge of the tank’s cannon, both elbows resting against bent knees, gazing at the sky. He didn’t seem to notice her and rather than disturb his chain of thought, Sophie merely turned her sights to the heavens.

Both of Shanxi’s moons hung in the sky like lanterns against the black, star-spattered, inky night. It was easy to forget just how small and insignificant life really was when considering the infinity that was space. Hell, the humans hadn’t even known about such possibilities until the discovery of the Charon relay. The mere notion of life beyond their own had been little more than a fairy-tale not so long ago.

It was staggering just how much damage that discovery had caused.

Was _still_ causing.

It took a few moments of this soul-deep contemplation for Sophie to realise that she was being watched - a chilly sensation – not unpleasant - that crawled over her shoulder just as she turned her gaze to Davix who’s bright purple eyes connected with hers almost instantly. His mandibles flared in what she assumed – again – was acknowledgement but his eyes didn’t shift. There was a softness to them, a familiarity that she couldn’t shake as they gazed at one another, yet again.

Sophie wanted to thank him then, for his caring words on the cliff-edge, for returning the pistol she asked him to guard so carefully—but mostly for the flowers. There was something about _that_ particular gesture alone that spoke to her far more than anything else the turian had done for her so far. Sophie was rather startled by the realisation of just how much Davix had touched her at that moment.

But he _had_ touched her, in a way that no other _person_ had done before, so much so that her lips moved to speak and no sound came forth to formulate the words she so desperately wanted to say. That she no longer saw just a turian, an alien from another world, a creature she claimed to know from the inside but didn’t know at all. She wasn’t sure what he was to her anymore, but an enemy certainly wasn’t it.

It seemed that Davix could sense her uncertainty, but he didn’t fill the silence. Instead he offered her a three-digit hand, fingers splayed, inviting her to sit and stargaze with him. Perhaps he wanted the company.

Sophie looked at his offer for only few seconds, until she carefully placed her own hand into the centre of his palm. She was so small compared to him, and the comprehension of that difference was solidified when his fingers closed around hers engulfing her entire hand within his.

Gently Davix hoisted Sophie onto the roof of the tank, as she planted a single foot on the door frame for support and guided her to the space between his legs, allowing her to settle on the metal of the roof and lean her body against his. There was no awkwardness there, no coyness in either of their movements, just two people sitting on a steel roof who didn’t want to be alone.

And he was _purring._  

Deep in his thick chest, Sophie could feel the soft, soothing vibrations of Davix’s purrs – not unlike a cat - reverberate in her bones. It wasn’t quite the song she heard before falling asleep in his embrace earlier, but the sensation was nice nonetheless. She found herself shuffling a little deeper into him, and Davix didn’t seem to mind one bit.

Had someone told her only a few days ago that she would find a strange sort of solace in the arms of a turian, Sophie would have laughed in their face. Now, as she sat there and pondered the night sky with her new-found and very unlikely friend from another world, she smiled knowingly to herself at the thought that she had never felt safer than she did right at this moment.

“Sleep well?” He asked, his voice, so deep, flanged, _gorgeous_ \- sounded just as sweet as the vibrations rumbling through him.

“No,” Sophie answered, though not without a hint of amusement in her tone.

She heard Davix hum, a sound of contemplation and complimented her humour before he answered, “Me neither.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading! All comments and Kudos are welcomed! I hope you enjoyed the latest instalment!!


	6. Songbird

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings: Use of strong language. 
> 
> Notes:   
> Bakrai – Palaveni word for ‘Bare-Faced’. One without colonial markings. A huge insult to any turian.   
> Princhav – turian slang - ‘Cowl-Biter’ one who is unwilling to grow up/acts childishly.   
> Twink – turian slang for youngster/child

It was the smell that roused her from her dreamless sleep. The first she’d had in what felt like a lifetime of troubled nightmares. But it was, indeed, the first time in a long while that Sophie had woken feeling _somewhat_ refreshed.

It was a pleasant change, even if her body didn’t like her lumpy bed – otherwise known as the passenger seat of the mako – and her neck ached from the awkward position she had fallen into during her night-time motions, but she could tell that she had _slept_. Her body must have desperately needed it, and yet again she hadn’t realised she’d fallen asleep in the arms of the gentle turian she’d found on the roof the night previous.

The last thing she could recall were the stars and the soft vibration of his purrs running through her entire body. It must have been that sound that had caused her to nod off.

It must have been.

There was something about Davix that had changed since that first moment they had met back in the sluice room of Mt. Myka. And it was that thought that tightened the knot already forming in her belly as reality began to sink in.

Had she fled with the other scientists, had she abandoned her resolve and left him to his fate, Davix would be long dead by now. Destroyed along with Project Pegasus—a forgotten relic of a failed, unknown, and obscure experiment. Sophie had been at the very centre of that experiment and even she was bewildered by its motive.

What even was it?

What were Pegasus trying to achieve other than simple knowledge?

The thought was distressing, and it touched her so deeply that Sophie found herself sitting up sharply in the cab of the tank, attempting to reflect on why the Alliance felt the need to obliterate what was left of Mt. Myka.

What where they trying to hide?

And did they know what she had done?

What she was still doing?

Were they aware that she was missing?

Were they looking for her?

For the Ghost?

The call on her omni-tool from the evening before resounded in her head. Her conversation with Richard could have been a very deadly one and that knot in her gut tightened a little more. If he could contact her so easily, what was to prevent the Alliance from tracking her? She couldn't discard the tool, it was her only link back to Earth after this whole ordeal could finally be put to bed, but the uncertainty of her future was beginning to sit heavy on her shoulders. Her thoughts brushed briefly against that of her father – the news of his death still hadn’t quite sunk in yet - that was until she heard the distinctive rapping of a clawed hand at the passenger side viewing port.

Sophie spun her head on her neck towards the sound, the breath catching in her throat, just as Davix’s hand left her sight, and that same smell that had woken her invaded her senses once again making her stomach growl. It was a blessing that she’d been disturbed. She couldn’t think of all the negativity right now.

Focus.

She needed to focus on the task at hand.

Her focus needed to be on Davix and his extraction point. Nothing could get in the way of that. She could deal with everything else once her ward was safe.

The smell came again.

Eggs.

It was that distinctive breakfast stink she remembered from happy Saturday mornings just before her favourite cartoons started to show.

She could smell eggs.

Opening the door on her side of the vehicle, the smell became stronger still and the crackle of flames filled her ears, but it was Davix’s voice, his oh so gorgeous deep, dual-toned voice, that caught her attention.

“Sorry I woke you. If I cooked them any longer they’d burn…”

The eggs (she had to assume Davix had robbed them from some poor mother bird’s nest nearby), sizzling deliciously in one of the two cooking pans she’d found, were apparently for her. Davix was cooking her breakfast, though seemingly nothing for himself. Sophie frowned at the thought that he wasn’t preparing his own meal, given that there was plenty of dextro food left that the pair had salvaged from the wreckage not two days ago.

“Wow, it smells so good!” she commented eventually as she plonked herself down next to her tall companion leaning over the pan and inhaling dramatically. That Saturday morning whiff of breakfast really took her back, it really did.  It made her so deliriously happy, that she couldn’t help the wide smile on her lips. 

Sophie turned to Davix then, not really acknowledging that he was gazing at her before he looked away suddenly and hurriedly took her meal off the heat. He placed the pan on the moist grass at her feet to cool. 

“Not hungry?” she quizzed, watching Davix’s mandibles flutter lightly against his mouth in what she could now translate as a grimace. She applauded herself silently that his facial expressions were becoming a little easier to read now.

“There’s no decent stones around here, so eating would be difficult.” He tilted his head a little as he spoke quite cheerfully, which surprised Sophie initially. She was so used to that hue of sorrow lingering in his tone and the song that lay beneath his voice - it simply wasn't there and it was nice to know that he was in a good mood this morning. “I can wait, it’s no problem.”

She furrowed her brow at the mention of ‘stones,’ not initially grasping what that had to do with eating until she recalled the many specimens in her lab and her discovery that turians had gizzards in their throats.

“I have some stones that might do.” She spoke between mouthfuls and noisily licking her fingers – the field kit containing the pans did not include necessities like knives and forks.

“You do?”

She hummed in confirmation, turning away from her meal to retrieve her collection of pretty pebbles she’d been collecting from her coat and pouring the smooth colourful rocks into Davix’s cupped hands.

He examined them, first by bringing them close to his face and seemingly smelling them before peering at them out of the corner of each eye.

 _“He looks at things like a bird would, so curious, so cute,”_ she thought idly, returning to her meal and pondering just how sweet he looked as he gazed at the pebbles in his hands.

“Where’d you get them?” His question held a tone of suspicion, and he crouched there, perched precariously on his clawed toes, in front of her with his cupped hands looking at her from beneath his dark heavy brow.

“Back at the lab,” she shrugged back at him nonchalantly, “Some specimens had retained their stones so…”

Davix’s expression didn’t shift a single ounce but he didn’t wait for her to finish before he parted his hands and allowed the pebbles to drop into the grass at his feet. There was a thick silence for a time as he crouched there holding his hands out like he didn’t quite know what to do with them before he suddenly lunged at Sophie and wiped them on her already filthy coat.

“Hey, hey, what are you doing?!” Sophie cried, attempting to recoil from Davix’s enormous hands on her sleeve and failing. “Those were fine! They were clean! Don’t you want to eat?!”

“I am not swallowing someone else’s rocks! I’m not an animal!”

“So, you’d rather go hungry?”

“By the _spirits_ , yes! I touched them, _gross_ … I can’t believe you made me touch them!! Why are you even collecting them? Humans are creepy… _you’re_ creepy!”

Davix got to his feet and visibly shuddered, his entire body quaking with disgust at what he’d just done, shaking his hands as he turned away from her. But despite his dramatic reaction to the situation, yet again, there was something so incredibly _human_ about his mannerisms even if he was now chirruping in his throat and cursing in a tongue unidentifiable to her decoder.

And she found herself chuckling a little behind her mouthful of yolk she had failed to prevent dribbling down her chin.

Davix made the best eggs.

Better than mom on a Saturday morning.

* * *

Breakfast ended on a high note, even despite the _stone_ incident. Davix had scratched around near the tank site and found a few pebbles he then washed with water from one of the many skins he’d salvaged from the lake just a couple of days ago. He’d dried them using the oil stained sheet he had wrapped around his waist.

Watching him eat was still fascinating, and Sophie couldn’t help but stare as he wolfed down yet another one of those _‘cowligator’_ steaks from the evening previous. Davix didn’t pay her much mind this time around, seemingly disinterested in her curiosity, so she took the liberty to watch and learn as he ate.

His teeth – much longer towards the back of the mouth than the front and steel in colour - were used to literally shred his food and his long rubbery tongue was the best tool for dragging the meat into the back of his mouth. Like her, Davix was forced to eat with his hands which made this simple and necessary task seem much more primitive and messy than it needed to be. There was little doubt in her mind that turians were just as civil as any human while they dined. She wondered idly if they had knives and forks or something resembling chopsticks. Maybe they had something her tiny human mind couldn’t comprehend at all.

It was his indifference to her stares that gave Sophie the courage to finally ask that one question that had been burning in her brain since the moment she’d set eyes on him.

“Davix?”

Her voice, though soft, seemed to startle him, not as much as when he was fixing the tank, but enough for him to pause with a chunk of shredded purple meat hanging out of his mouth comically as his eyes darted about her face.

She leaned forward, resting both elbows on each knee before she continued. “Can I ask you something…” she faltered as that little piece of meat was suddenly sucked into Davix’s mouth coupled with a hard, loud swallow. “…something … personal?”

He regarded her for a few seconds, and though he didn’t move she could see - even at this vantage point - he wasn’t surveying her for a threat, at least not this time. He was considering if he wanted the question at all. Eventually he simply nodded before throwing more meat and another pebble down his gullet.

Sophie thought for a few seconds about how she could broach this question; if it was possible that he wouldn’t be offended at all, but eventually she surmised that Davix was quite a direct man ( _man_ … was that a term she should be applying here? She wasn’t sure…) and so the direct approach was probably the best one.

“Why do you look…” she started, noting that his gaze was back upon her, though not aggressively as she lifted a palm to him as though she was presenting him to himself. “… the way you do?” she finished eventually, unable to find any other words appropriate for the information she wanted to hear. The question wasn’t unfounded, Davix looked different from all the other turians Sophie had dealt with and she wanted to know why.

What he did next surprised her a little.

Davix sat up, abandoning his breakfast at his feet and chuckled, mandibles flared in what she could only translate as an amused grin. Of all the reactions Sophie had expected that one certainly wasn’t one of them. If anything, she expected him to simply shoot her down and refuse to answer her ignorant questions. It wasn’t lost on her that he didn’t like himself very much and she had already assumed that his appearance was to blame, if only partly.

“You know, Sophie…” he looked up at her with those purple eyes of his – beautiful things they were, like amethysts in the dirt - but they weren’t fierce like they usually were. They were soft still, like the night previous and it wasn’t until he looked at her just now that Sophie began to truly appreciate the change she was noticing in him. It had only been a few days since they’d met, but the way he looked at her was different, there was no denying it. Not that she had time to dwell on it as he continued with what he was saying.

“… we’ve made it at least three whole cycles without _that_ coming up.”

Even with that said, Davix didn’t seem at all offended, which boded well for her at least. Sophie simply chuckled in response and waited to see if the turian would elaborate, which he did much to her delight.

“I’m the only one in my family who looks this way. It’s a recessive gene thing. I probably inherited this from a great grandparent or something.” He hummed a little, deep in his throat as he spoke but it was clear from his main voice that he wasn’t exactly thankful to the turian ancestor who’d given him his body.

“Oh, okay, so your parents weren’t…”

“No.” He chuckled again but his voice had receded, pretty much how she’d expected it to. His laugh was not humorous as it was only seconds ago. Once again it was despondent, unhappy, and it made her chest ache to hear it. Sophie had aired the question out of nothing but curiosity. The last thing she wanted to do was upset or insult him. But he continued regardless, and she allowed him to speak.

“It’s odd really, because if I weren’t so big and ugly I’d look just like my brother. Aside from my colony markings, of course.” Davix circled a pointed finger around his face as though to emphasise he was talking about the red markings dominating his features. “His are different from mine.”

Sophie felt her eyes narrow at his use of the term _‘ugly’_. Davix was anything but that, at least in her eyes. She could look at him for forever and a day. He had so much about him that was so physically appealing—the strange exotic exoskeleton that started so thick on the shoulders and chest but ran like falling pebbles over his strong belly, the way it jutted out of his shoulders and hips like sharp outcroppings of stone, the contrast of his tan hide against the charcoal of his natural and seemingly iridescent armour. If she didn’t know any better, she could swear that Davix was made of metal. He was big - tall yet slim and well built, with strong arms and powerful legs.

He radiated strength and his head hung regally on his thick neck. And he had the most gorgeous purple eyes. He was terrifying to gaze upon, but in a sense that he was a curiosity, something to peek closer at, something she wanted to touch and familiarise herself with.

_A dragon if she’d ever seen one._

Davix was _beautiful,_ there was simply no other way to describe him. What a shame it was that he had somehow been forced to think differently. Damn whoever had put that idea into his head.

Even so, Sophie took the _‘ugly’_ out of his statement and stored it away for another time, choosing instead to focus on a different and more positive part of his answer.

“Oh! You have a brother?” she asked with absolute genuine interest and rocking a little against her knees. She recalled him mentioning a mother who had died when he was very young but the mention of other family members belonging to this beast of a turian seated before her was too good to pass up.

It was sometimes easy to forget that turians were just people, not _things_.

“Yeah. I have a sister too. They’re both older than me.”

“Oh my god, you’re the baby?” Her question was coupled with a delighted gasp while she planted the palms of each hand against her mouth.

Davix seemed to recoil at Sophie’s surprise, his head pulling back on his neck and both mandibles twitching comically on either side of his face.

“ _Baby_ …” he said the word softly, in such a way that caused Sophie to think that he didn’t understand what it meant. Not for the first time.

“Yeah, you know…” she demonstrated what she meant by hovering a hand above the ground as though to explain the size of an object. “… the youngest, the little one. The baby of the family. That’s you, you’re the baby. How cute!”

He watched her demonstration though not without muttering the words _‘baby’_ and _‘cute’_ at least twice as she did so. It was sweet how he did that and she had noticed it a couple of times during the little conversations they were having more and more now. If Davix didn’t understand a word, he would repeat it as though this action would force it to make sense to his alien ears. It never did but it was endearing to see him try. Perhaps the decoder on Davix’s own omni-tool wasn’t as advanced as he liked to make out.

“What is _cute_?” Davix asked, with a tilt of his head as he leaned towards Sophie a little.

She smiled at him, a broad grin that pulled relentlessly at each corner of her mouth and she noticed how Davix’s eyes shifted quickly from her eyes to her mouth as her smile widened. His mandibles edged outwards then, a little fluttery initially, but it was the first time she’d ever seen him attempt to mimic her in such a way. She wasn’t certain, but she was so sure that this action meant he was smiling back at her.

“Cute, like sweet or nice. You know, attractive in an endearing sort of way.” She finished with a nod, but her smile remained, and it felt nice. It was the first time she truly felt like smiling, how strange that this alien sat before her was the one causing it.  

“I think you’re cute….” She was speaking before her brain had the chance to process the words, but she didn’t retract them, there was no point when what she was saying was actually true.

“… _very_ cute.”

Davix’s _smile_ died, both mandibles pulled tightly back to his mouth though they twitched there for a time as he seemed to struggle with what Sophie had just told him. His throat flushed a deep purple, almost like a bruise, to which Sophie giggled, albeit accidentally.

Davix was blushing and he didn’t know what to do about it. It was quite obvious that he wasn’t used to gaining compliments of this ilk which made this little chat a bit sad if she was to think about it hard enough.

“Have I embarrassed you? I’m sorry if I have.” Sophie was still grinning even as she delivered her apology.

“N-no! No, not embarrassed, no,” He stuttered his eyes wider than Sophie had ever seen them that she feared they would simply fall out of his head. Davix wasn’t just cute, he was adorable. She wondered if he’d enjoy being told so, but she refrained from saying anything right then. If he blushed any more than he was already he’d surely melt.

“I just…” he cleared his throat, but he was having trouble maintaining eye contact as he continued while fondling his fingers awkwardly in his lap. “… no one’s ever said anything like that to me before. Thanks… I think…”

Sophie hummed at him, and though she could think of nothing better than sitting there in the grass chatting about how cute the huge black turian was and watching him slowly turning completely purple, even she knew that the day would only stay early for so long.

It was time to go.

“Well, let me just say, Davix…” Sophie began as she pushed herself to her feet relishing how the bones in her back popped as she stretched before beginning to wander past him. Though she made certain that she looked him in the eye for what she told him next. “… whoever told you you’re ugly is a liar.”

Sophie didn’t wait for an answer or a reaction, but she could feel his eyes on her as she made her way back to the tank.

* * *

It had been a while since a woman had brought colour to his hide, a damn good while and Davix was far more embarrassed by how his own body could betray him in such a way than the comments Sophie had been throwing at him that morning.

It went without saying that this was not the way he had envisioned learning the definition of the word _cute_ , not by any stretch of the imagination.

But with the breakfast stuff packed away, the fire quenched and the pair of them (and their lumbering brick of a tank) well into their journey, that conversation didn’t rear its head for a second time. For that, Davix was more than thankful. Not because he didn’t like the fact that a pretty girl thought he was – what was the word again – _cute_. But for the fact that if he flushed like that again he was quite sure he’d have no skin left. The whole ordeal had left him a little hot in the cowl, a cool off period was sorely needed.

It seemed that the chocolate-topped human was in a talkative mood, which was surprising considering the barrage of awful news she had gotten the evening previous. But then again, Davix had noticed that her eyes were brighter than usual. Perhaps, for the first time during their adventure, she had somehow managed to have a decent sleep.

He hoped Ruban wouldn’t be back to haunt her anytime soon. He liked Sophie a little more than he felt he probably should, and the thought that she was plagued by nightmares of a situation she had no hand in left a bad taste in his mouth. There was only one thing worse than being punished for a crime you didn’t commit, and that was punishing yourself for the actions of others.

Not that this mattered today; he certainly wouldn’t be the one to bring it up.

The conversation had started with Sophie wanting to play a game; something called Eye-Spy. Though this had very quickly died when it became apparent that the Palaveni and Earthen alphabets were not the same and neither of them could comprehend the thing they were meant to be looking for. They had tried the same game with colours and though this game had outlived the last if only for a few minutes, again, it turned out both humans and turians could see certain colours that the other couldn’t.

It was a learning curve either way, and the pair of them had laughed about it as opposed to those awkward silences they had been experiencing for the past few days. It was a nice change, and there was nothing sweeter than that infectious toothy grin Sophie flashed him every once in a while.

For him.

Those smiles were his.

He would archive them in his memory forever.

She looked so beautiful when she smiled.

Eventually, however, they found a fun game to play—teaching each other insults in their native languages, or as close as they could get them. Right at this moment they were discussing a term used against mature turians who acted like children.

“So, you keep your babies in your cowl? Oh wow, that is so sweet! You must be so tiny when you’re born!”

Davix couldn’t help but laugh at Sophie all but flailing in her seat with her feet on the dashboard, and he had noticed that she was playing with the pretty pink mountain flowers he’d picked for her the night before, spinning them around between her fingers. They were dying – the edges of each petal now turning a dirty dry brown – a shame, but an inevitable one. There were plenty more where those came from. Still, Sophie was comfortable, not just within the bumpy tank but around _him._ Davix had to admit that it was one of the nicest feelings he’d had for a while.

“You _could_ say young turians are small. You’d probably be able hold a new-born twink in the palm of your hand,” Davix confirmed amusedly, though noting that they were rapidly going off course of what the term _princhav_ really meant.

“Twink…? What’s that?”

“Twink, young one. What did you call them… a _baby_?”

Sophie seemed astonished as she sat up in her seat with a whimsical gasp and gawked at him for what seemed like the longest time before she finally spoke again. “You call your kids, little turians, twinks?”

“Yes.”

“That’s adorable… the more you talk the cuter you get, Davix, I swear. If you had cheeks, I’d be pinching them right about now.” She spoke matter-of-factly but there was something in her tone that heavily suggested that she meant every word and he couldn’t help the hitch of his mandibles as he tried in vain to keep his grin in check.

“Anyway, it’s your turn, Sophie. Make it a good one.”

His eyes were focused on the road ahead as Shanxi’s sun drifted along the horizon. It had to be nearing midday as he could feel his eyes starting to sting. Since the beginning of this excursion his sleep patterns were completely out of sync and instead of getting the two naps that was healthy for a turian, he was making do with a mere four hours sleep each cycle. Needless to say, the sleep deprivation was beginning to take its toll. He thought idly that it could be very beneficial to him if he taught Sophie how to drive the tank, so he could take a much-needed nap. Her voice chimed in, interrupting him from his musings.

“Cunt.” Was all she said.

Davix took it in for a while, repeating the word a couple of times if only to get a feel for how it felt on his tongue, though he did notice Sophie snort each time he said it.

“It’s so bad that hearing me say it makes you laugh?” he asked, a chuckle bouncing in his voice, glancing at her fleetingly as he spoke.

Sophie just nodded, seemingly unable to answer him verbally, too busy attempting to muffle her fits of laughter behind her hand. He said it one more time for good measure taking pleasure in how she leaned forward and felt the need to support herself with a hand on her knee as she laughed again, almost to the point where she began to cough. He thought her smile was gorgeous on its own, her laugh was something else.

“Alright,” Davix nodded knowingly, leaning back in his seat with the knowledge that this word was quite awful for some reason. “So, what does it mean?”

“Well,” Sophie started, sitting herself up in her seat as though she had to brace herself for the explanation and clearing her throat. “It’s a horrible word, like, _the_ most awful word in the English language. It’s the worst type of insult you can give to anyone really. If you want to raise a few eyebrows in the room, _cunt_ is definitely the way to go about that.”

Davix chuckled with a small shake of his head.

“Okay, so it’s a bad word, the baddest of all the bad words…?”

“Oh yes, as bad as they come.”

“But what does it _mean_?”

He saw Sophie weigh up her answer with a twist to her lips and a tilt of her head from one side to the next. “Well, if you use it as an insult it generally means horrible or awful person. But it’s actually a word used to describe the vagina.”

Davix felt his brow lift at that. How strange that a feminine description would be used as the worst insult to humankind, it didn’t make much sense to him, and it seemed that Sophie had noticed his shift in demeanour.

“What?” she asked, amusement still hanging in her voice.

“Nothing,” he answered, perhaps a little too quickly but with little humour in either his main voice or his subvocals. “I just think it’s a bit strange that a word that was originally meant to describe female reproductive parts could be the most horrendous thing to call a human.” He shrugged with a lilt of his mandibles before muttering to himself, “It doesn’t make much sense to me.”

“How do you mean?” She wanted more than he was delivering but Davix noted that her tone was curious and by no means on the defensive. She wanted to know so who was he to keep it from her?

“Maybe it’s a cultural thing, but we insult each other on our merit, place of birth, or general mannerisms. Gender doesn’t play a part in any of that. A turian is a turian regardless of what’s between his or her legs. We’re born the same, fight the same, fuck the same, die the same. The worst insult for us is something called a bakrai.”

He could see out of the corner of his eye that she was listening intently, her pretty blue eyes were gazing at him with a curiosity akin to that of a child. Her interest was genuine, and he heard Sophie repeat the word as he did with hers before he chose to explain.

“Bakrai means plain or bare-faced. No markings mean no origin which used to mean no honour. The term is old and only the older generations really hang on to it, but it’s still quite awful. If someone dared to call me bakrai I’d chew their face off.” Of course, he didn’t quite mean that literally.

“It just sounds to me like your culture is very … _male-centric_ in terms of the way you choose to insult one-another. Does that make sense?”

“Perfect sense…” her voice was quiet, a little wistful but her eyes were still on him as they drove through the green towards their destination which was still a good four days drive away if they continued to follow this route. Though it dawned on him then that the game had ended, and silence was, once again, beginning to fill the void of the tank.

A silence that Davix did not want.

“Have I offended you?”

It took a second or two for the little human to respond, but she did so without hostility, a relief to say the least.

“No, not at all, you just…” Sophie hesitated, her focus shifting back to the road ahead as she resumed to make herself comfortable once more. “… you’ve given me something to think about, is all.”

There was the hint of a smile on her lips, and though she wasn’t looking at him, Davix was sure the smile was his as she went back to spinning those little pink flowers in her fingers.

They were all for him lately it seemed, those smiles.

Sophie was so beautiful when she smiled.

* * *

_It was a river of mud._

_Deep, vile and unrelenting. An unforgiving stream of broken promises and betrayal._

_It rushed past her, a violent thrashing of sludge, the dirt spraying her face as she looked for a better way to cross._

_And there was no bridge._

_And she had to get across._

_She had to._

_She would die if she didn’t and the panic frothed in her gullet when the screams came again from_ _behind her._

_She was being chased. By what, she didn’t know, but it was chasing her and if it caught her it would tear her to pieces, inch by inch._

**_“Sophie.”_ **

_She recognised the name as it was called to her, but not as her own. The voice was strange, dual, soft. She had to get away, and the only way was across the filthy river in front of her. She dared to dip a foot in only to have the murky waters drag her in._

_She didn’t scream, she couldn’t. She struggled to fight the current; her limbs were too heavy, and she was dragged along in the filth until her hand found an outcrop just as she reached the summit of the waterfall. Her entire body was being dragged over the edge, but she hung on for dear life._

_She didn’t want to die._

_Not like this._

_Not like this._

_Please._

_Not like this._

**_“Sophie.”_ **

_It was there again, the call of a name she didn’t know, that was until she saw him standing on the same outcropping of rock she was gripping onto so tightly._

_Ruban._

_His eyes shone against the black._

_They were so sad, so very sad._

_And so blue, so very blue._

_So beautiful._

_Cobalt._

_She realised then that this was the thing that had been chasing her, and that the river wasn’t a river at all. It was the filth oozing out of his mouth. The filth forced down his throat by her own people. He stood over her as she struggled against the thick fluid she was drowning in as she looked up at him feebly. She reached for him, albeit weakly, and fleetingly as not to lose her already tentative grip on her slippery rock._

_And he spoke that same name again in a voice that wasn’t his._

**_“Wake up, Sophie”_ **

_Davix._

_That was Davix’s voice she could hear, and it wasn’t until then that she realised that it was her name he was calling._

_It was her distraction that was her undoing as Ruban—dead and decaying before her very eyes— lifted a single foot and stamped so hard on her small fingers, the pain shooting through her hand forced her to let go._

_And she fell._

_Over the edge._

_And she fell forever._

_Forever._

_Forever._

_The hard rocks beneath the waterfall rushed to greet her and they would batter her fragile body until it broke into a thousand pieces._

_She fell forever, helpless._

_And he watched from his pedestal atop this fountain of regret. He watched as she plummeted to meet her death._

_His eyes. They were so sad, so very sad._

_And so blue, so very blue._

_So beautiful._

**_“Sophie!”_ **

_Cobalt._

_\--_

Sophie woke with a lurch, her body arching as she bolted upwards. Her heart hammered in her chest so hard, so fast that it was painful, and she feared it would simply burst out of her ribcage. She shivered against the ice-cold sweat still clinging to her skin and she felt herself recoil at his touch, as Davix – attentive as he ever was – placed a calming hand on her cheek. He pulled his hand away the moment she flinched, but he leaned towards her regardless, those beautiful purple eyes of his fixing her with an intense stare.

It had been his voice calling her name in her dream.

He’d been trying to save her from her nightmare.

It took her a while to gather herself and take stock of her surroundings, recalling only briefly at this point that their journey had come to an end for the evening and set up camp beneath an overhang. They were nearer the mountains here, but the outcrop Davix had chosen for their night-stay protected them for the most part from the elements at least.

She couldn’t remember falling asleep after their evening meal.

And it was starting to rain.

“I can help with your nightmares,” Davix said eventually. His comment was blunt, flavourless and as she began to calm her frayed nerves enough to be coherent she gazed back quizzically before she shook her head and pulled her eyes away from his.

There was something about the way he looked at her now that had changed she had noticed it that morning but tried not to dwell on it at the time. Turians didn’t show expressions through their facial features aside from their mandibles and it was perplexing how she was able to read him without fully understanding what those appendages were telling her.

But there was no denying it, the mood around the camp fires was different now. He was softer somehow, and his voice was almost melodic – a thrum she felt deep inside herself whenever he spoke. Davix had changed, though for now it eluded Sophie what that really meant, though she was quite certain it was far more than he was willing for her to see.

At least right now.  

“I don’t see how…” Sophie started before adjusting herself and rubbing both eyes with the heel of each hand. The dream was still raw in her mind, so much so she could still feel the tears bubbling in her eyes. She could still feel the slime of the rock slipping through her fingers before she’d fallen.

She would not cry.

Not again.

Not in front of him.

She was not weak.

She was stronger than this.

Eventually her fight for composure triumphed and she leaned back on both hands, not bothering to meet the black turian’s gaze next to her. “… therapy’s the only thing that’ll help me,” she finished solemnly before chewing on her lower lip.

She saw Davix contemplate her answer out of the corner of her eye, narrowing his brow with a confused tilt to his head – like a dog hearing a strange sound.

“That’s not true,” Davix answered somewhat simply though not without a hue of humour to his tone. “You don’t need therapy, Sophie, just…” she turned to look at him as he spoke, his melodic sub-vocals buzzed in his throat “… rebalancing, I think.” Davix finished with a firm and seemingly confident nod.

“Rebalancing.” Sophie repeated his statement as she tried to make sense of what he was saying but failed to do so.

“Okay? And how would you be able to help with this… _rebalancing_?”

“I can show you, but there is one condition… well… two actually.”

She didn’t bother to question him about the conditions of the aid he was offering, quite confident that he would deliver the information regardless. He did so, after shuffling a little closer and holding out his hand to her.

“The translator needs to be deactivated for this to work. Believe it or not you can’t actually hear me very well with that thing on.” Davix tapped the side of his head with a single finger - the one with the missing talon – indicating that he was talking about the implant.

She chuckled at him, not quite believing what he was telling her.

“Yeah, no offense, Davix, but the last time you spoke to me without the decoder you damn near deafened me.”

She meant the comment in jest and by the way Davix lowered his gaze and chuckled softly behind his flaring mandibles it seemed he’d taken it in the light of which it was delivered.

“I’m not going to speak to you, at least, not in that sense. We turians communicate mostly through harmonics, not through our voice, so it shouldn’t hurt your ears…”

“Harmonics…” She repeated, there was something quite beautiful about the way he’d said that one word and it seemed her repetition of it prompted the turian sat opposite to enlighten her.

“Harmonics to us are like expressions of feelings, emotions. Our language is not complex, it is short, terse, and to the point, we _sing_ – if you like – to display how a particular situation or person makes us feel. I have noticed humans, when you speak like to… _hit fences_ … is that right?”

“Beat around the bush,” Sophie corrected though not unkindly and not without the fond smile that formed on her lips. He’d been listening to her ramblings in the tank while driving here, and he was attempting to relate to her, using phrases she was familiar with. Sophie couldn’t help it, but she smiled at Davix a lot quite lately. There was something about him that caused her to smile even when she didn’t particularly feel like smiling.

The idea was a little ludicrous, but she couldn’t shake the feeling that she was developing a little bit of a crush on the alien. The feeling wasn’t unpleasant, and it was nothing she couldn’t handle. Hell, she’d had crushes before, on boys at school and that one chemistry teacher in her senior year.

She quite liked the flutter in her tummy when Davix spoke her name, it sounded nice on his tongue and within that deep, flanged and oh so gorgeous voice of his.

It was harmless.

Just a harmless crush.

She could handle it.

The butterflies fluttered in her belly even as she tried to move the conversation along.

“So… Davix. How are you communicating with me now? Through harmonics?”

“Not entirely,” he responded with a light chuckle and a slight flare of both mandibles. “The translator makes it difficult for me to talk to you that way. I think, if I’m understanding this right, the decoder struggles to pick up certain sounds we make. Most Citadel species can’t understand turian harmonics on their own, so we use a mixture of the two when we talk outside our species.”

Sophie vaguely recalled Davix mentioning these _Citadel species_ in passing but hadn’t asked him to elaborate. Even now it felt like a subject for another time.

“Isn’t it difficult for you to do that though?” She asked with a wince.

Davix tilted his head then and both mandibles hitched high on his face in what Sophie could understand was the turian version of a shrug. She’s seen him shrug with his shoulders before, but she was certain that action didn’t mean what she thought it did.

“No, not really. I was raised on Palaven but I, like everyone else, knows how to converse outside turian-kind. It is what it is. Where I come from if you fail to learn you perish.”

Sophie gazed at him for a moment, thinking about his words before she moved the conversation along.

“You said there were two conditions to this … _rebalancing_ …” she emphasised the term with an arch of a single eyebrow. “… maybe you should tell me the other one before we disable the decoder.”

She heard him hum coupled with a slight bow of his head as he activated his own tool and flicked through the display. “I’ll set mine up, so I can turn yours back on afterwards. Last thing we want is me deafening you by accident.”

Sophie wasn’t sure exactly why Davix would need to be the one to reactivate the translator, but she didn’t argue, there was obviously some sort of method to his madness.

“But the second condition is to take off your science brain and leave it here…” Davix held out both hands to her once more, prompting her to glance down at them before he continued, “… I need you to just trust me.”

Sophie could feel herself hesitating as she lifted her gaze and connected again with Davix’s amethyst eyes, the uncertainty of what he was asking her to do creating chasms of doubt in her mind. Without the translator how was she supposed to follow his lead? She was apprehensive about this whole thing and the longer they talked about it the less she wanted to take part.

She couldn’t think of anything worse than surrendering control of herself to someone else.

“But, how…”

He interrupted her by placing both his hands on her face though she wasn’t sure if his thumb grazing her lips was intentional or not. Either way, her heart leapt into her throat as he touched her, and he looked at her so tenderly.

“I’ll guide you,” he was whispering, the subvocal in his throat silent as his mandibles flared in that smile he showed her earlier that day. “It’s alright. I got you.”

She’d heard him say that to her before. That moment he’d saved her from the mako as the turian shuttle plummeted towards them and suddenly she was there again, flying through the air towards the water, in the safety of his arms.

What she wouldn’t give to be wrapped in him right now.

There was no need for all of this rebalancing nonsense.

Just an embrace would do.

Just once.

Just this once.

She didn’t even realise, even after he’d gathered her into his lap and placed her hands at the base of his throat that his song had already begun, and she drifted into a slumber as the world fell away from her, their brows pressed firmly together with his hands touching her face oh so gently.

\---

_It was cold, so very cold, it always was at the bottom of any sea. Nothing lived here, only darkness and despair. The water was so heavy, pushing her down as she continued to sink and felt it filling her lungs._

_It was okay._

_This wasn’t such a bad way to die._

_It was better this way._

_“You’re drowning.”_

_There was no voice. Just a sound so sweet, so light and gorgeous, there was so much sorrow within this beautiful music that came from nowhere she feared she would weep. And yet, without really hearing him she could feel him within it. A source of desire pulling at her soul commanding she reach out, reach out and touch him._

_It was enough for her to open her eyes and see the shimmer of the night sky at the surface._

_“You’re drowning. Breathe, my one, my love. Breathe for me.”_

_She didn’t want to breathe. She wanted to be free of the agony, to join young Ruban, his poor mother. To see father again, to have him hold her in his arms and tell her how proud he was of her. To tell her how much he loved her._

_She was so alone here._

_So alone._

_“I know, my darling, I know. I'm alone too, so alone. Breathe for me,” he said again, that voice of reason she couldn’t really hear. But she could feel him, inside of her, he touched her so deeply she had to place a hand on her chest fearing he would simply burst from within._

_But he wasn’t inside of her, no—he was a shadow in the water, a monster on the hunt. It pursued her at a distance but she didn’t move. Even as the shadow approached, she closed her eyes against it in the hopes that if she ignored it, it would simply go away._

_It didn’t._

_“You found me once. I’ll find you now. No pain, no suffering. Just me. Just you. Just us. Breathe for me.”_

_Eventually she dared to open her eyes, the music, so melodic, so sad ran through her veins and she was faced with the black shadow, and it sang to her, like the twittering of birds in the trees._

_It was singing to her._

_Her songbird._

_“The stars look better than the sand. I’ll show you. I’ll show you the stars.”_

_It was enormous, so big that its shadow filled the ocean. But she wasn’t afraid. She wanted this, her songbird._

_She wanted **him**. _

_A bird with no face, so strange and so alien, with feathers so thick they drifted in the current. It was so black she couldn’t quite see it properly, even as it closed in, it’s wings curling around her and it nuzzled its head beneath her chin._

_“Let me show you. My stars are so beautiful, I’ll show you, my one, my love. Breathe for me and I’ll show you.”_

_But she knew it was beautiful._

_Without even looking._

_This bird was so beautiful, and it sang so sweetly. She wanted more._

_She wanted to breathe._

_She wanted **him**. _

_“Show me,” she could speak, even beneath the waves of her sorrow, as she wrapped her arms around the creature’s thick feathered neck and buried her face in the soft, silky plumage on its head. “Show me your beautiful stars, and I’ll breathe for you.”_

_The song intensified, the deep thrum reverberated in her bones so deliciously as they soared through the water, towards that glimmering night she could see from her bed of sand. Her songbird spun and danced through the depths until they broke the surface. The air was so fresh, so clean and so sweet, so cleansing that she let go of her songbird, her arms splayed, head thrown back._

_And she breathed._

_For the first time._

_She really **breathed**._

_All the despair, the sorrow, the unadulterated guilt, all the ruins of her shattered soul left her in that one life-quenching breath and she fell from her steed, slipping from her soft feathered seat but her songbird didn’t watch her fall._

_He swooped beneath her and she landed so softly amongst the plumage. She would stay here forever, deep within him, and she prayed he would never let her go, her one, her love._

_“No pain, no suffering, just you, just me, just us, Davix.”_

* * *

Her breathing evened out over time, the rise and fall of her chest was hypnotising as she slept so deeply against him; each breath blowing so hotly and so deliciously against the hide of his throat.

He’d long fallen silent but he knew the song had worked, at least this time. It was such a simple trick for a turian to perform but Davix had doubted his own ability to sing to her in the raw or her ability to connect with the song at all. But she had, and here she lay curled up in his arms dreaming whatever dreams he had poured from his soul into hers. He’d confessed to her, unintentionally, but he had regardless though he was uncertain if Sophie would have picked up on how he felt about her.

Davix supposed he’d find out when she woke up.

A single tear clung to her lashes and he watched this one droplet of emotion she was allowing him in her state of ultimate vulnerability until the weight became too much and it fell onto her cheek. He caught it, with a single light brush of his thumb, noting how the moisture left a clean streak against her dirty face, and he took the opportunity then to linger there, touching her warm skin so lightly in his hand.

Having been dumped in the lake not so long ago coupled with this long, arduous journey, it wasn’t any wonder that she was so filthy. Her hair, once soft and silky, was grimy and plastered to her scalp and face in dirty clumps. Her clothes - stretched and torn in parts - were equally as dirty as the rest of her.

And yet he couldn’t tear his eyes away.

Just looking at her was pulling his heart to pieces.

Despite all of that, all of the dirt, the grime.

Despite her species.

Despite it all.

He’d fallen.

He’d fallen hard.

There was no going back.

His heart and his head had long ceased communicating, now embroiled in an intense fight over what was _right_ and what he _wanted_. But it didn’t matter anyway, Davix had allowed himself to wander into that point of no return. He couldn’t fight it anymore—didn’t _want_ to fight it anymore.

This wasn’t mere attraction.

It went far beyond that.

He wanted her so badly he ached and yet deep down he knew that he couldn’t have her. And the mere thought that he would eventually have to leave her behind was crippling. The thought of never seeing her again…

It was too much to think about right now.

He would savour these moments; cherish them as best he could.

It was all he could hope for.

Davix reached for the tarp nearby then with his free hand as he carefully shuffled his back down the wall of the overhang if only to make himself more comfortable without waking Sophie; if she was sleeping he may as well be too. He pulled the cover around their bodies before settling his arm back around her waist, a motion that disturbed her only enough for her to snuggle a little deeper into his throat and throw a single arm around his neck with what sounded like a contented sigh. Her fingers pawed at his hide so delicately even as she slept, but her touch set his body on fire, and he sighed hotly in response though not without the shame of his reactions making his guts churn.

Why was it so wrong to feel this way?

This thing in his arms, so small, so fragile and yet so strong, who’d saved his life, gave him meaning and justified his existence. Was it truly so bad to crave more? To long to be her lover, to mate with her and finally belong?

He knew, even without her saying it that she felt for him as he did for her. He could smell it on her, her pheromones had changed dramatically over the course of only a couple of days. She wanted him and she was fighting the same battle in her heart as he was.

How was he ever going to be able to let her go?

“By the spirits, Sophie…” he whispered to her in the darkness, hooking a strand of dark damp hair behind her ear, knowing she couldn’t hear but almost wishing she could as he gently stroked a single mandible against her brow. “… I wish I could keep you.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Kudo's and comments are always appreciated!! Let me know what you think :D


	7. Locket Hearts

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Beta read by Flux-Eterna
> 
> Warnings: Mentions of domestic abuse/assault in this chapter. Discretion is advised.  
> \--  
> Notes: Murifa Black – a brand of very sweet turian brandy (is actually purple in colour not black). Produced in various distilleries throughout Palaven and her colonies and matured for three galactic decades. Expensive and considered an upmarket beverage suitable only for those in high positions of power. “A general’s drink”
> 
> Amicae – The turian version of a significant other.

It was comfortable here; warm and soft in some places and a little cooler and harder in others. Sophie’s body moved steadily in a smooth rhythm of each breath and the soft beating of Davix’s heart filled her head. She was dreaming still, she had to be, and she was quite aware that she didn’t want to wake up.

Not this time.

Not ever.

She would stay here in the safety of his strong arms for as long as she could.

_Her one, her love._

That soft thumping of his pulse so deep in his thick chest was almost enough to send her adrift once more as she pulled herself deeper into his already tight embrace. She relished in how his arms closed around her much smaller frame, and how her body soaked up his heat. When was the last time anyone had touched her like this, so soft and tender? She couldn’t quite remember. But dreams never last forever, do they? And it was with _that_ realisation – that she was actually awake and had been for some time – that Sophie finally opened her eyes, albeit begrudgingly.

The light of the day was the first thing she saw, and it stung her eyes as she gently pushed her body away from Davix’s with a weak groan. She dared to gaze up at the turian who sung her the sweetest lullaby she’d ever heard and felt his hands grip a little tighter around her waist, his sharp claws pulling at the filthy fabric of her coat - she’d have thrown it away before now if the evenings weren’t so damn cold.

Davix was awake already, and he looked at her with those strange yet gorgeous purple eyes of his and it was at that moment, when their gazes connected that his voice resounded in her mind.

_“I wish I could keep you.”_

Sophie felt herself falter, her flesh tightening around her body as she felt those words sink into her soul. Had she heard those words from him, or had she truly dreamt them? The songbird in her dream certainly hadn’t sung those words to her, she was sure of it. After a moment of contemplation, she surmised that she must have imagined it.

She must have.

It was then that her songbird and his beautiful sad music began to dissolve, perhaps the lullaby - his rebalancing of her - wasn’t what she thought it was. She couldn’t recall a nightmare so he hadn’t lied about his ability to help her there, but the translator had been deactivated so how could she have even understood him at all to gain anything else out of it? It was no good reading into things that simply weren’t there and there was no way this alien would share such preposterous emotions with the likes of her.

She was the tour guide. She was a tool to be used, and she would be discarded as such once she was no longer useful. Nothing more. It benefitted him for her to be on top form, of course it did. Story of her life.

It was his voice, so deep, flanged and oh so gorgeous, that pulled her out of her sleep addled stupor.

“Sleep well?” he asked, so softly that he was almost whispering. Almost but not quite, and yet again as she dared to settle her eyes upon his handsome face, the song awoke once again in her mind.

_“Breathe for me.”_

She answered his question with a simple nod though not without a small smile that knitted her lips together, but she couldn’t shake it; the dream itself was almost forgotten but the feelings it had disturbed remained, she could feel them settling within herself like silt.

_“And I’ll show you the stars.”_

They were tying her insides in knots. They had to be real, those feelings of desire, they just had to be, and they were so strong they couldn't just be hers alone. They couldn’t be. She wanted to question it, to ask him what it meant and what he was trying to show her. And yet, even now, she already knew the answer to those questions.

_“My one, my love.”_

But was it his message from him to her, or was it just a fantasy rooted so deeply in her own touch starved mind? She wanted so badly for the answer to be the former and yet she found she was scared that it wouldn’t be; that the images manifested in her mind were hers and hers alone.

She was too afraid to ask.

“Humans sleep for hours, huh?”

Davix’s voice, again, pulled Sophie out of her musings with a start, prompting her to quickly remove herself from his touch, causing her to stagger away from him on legs that didn’t feel like her own.

“S-sorry, I didn’t mean to… sorry,” she stuttered while brushing herself down and attempting to fix her disgusting, filthy hair. God she needed a shower, a bath, hell even a damn puddle if only to wash some of the grime from her skin. She felt so disgusting and dirty and there was little doubt in her mind that she must stink. 

She hadn’t noticed when Davix had gotten to his feet, so damn distracted by her own trepidation of a dream she didn’t even know was real that she flinched as he brushed past her, though it seemed he noticed her nervous disposition and halted in his tracks.

“Is everything alright?”

She couldn’t answer at first, her frazzled mind failing still to comprehend what was happening to her and how her feelings for this alien towering over her had so suddenly changed. But was this change sudden, or had it simply creeped up on her without her knowledge? She was aware that a crush was developing but the searing heat in her belly and the hammering of her heart at little more than his touch heavily suggested something else - something much deeper and far more dangerous.

It was the moment his facial plates shifted – a change of expression, perhaps concern – that Sophie finally came to her senses, at least for the time being.

“Yes, yes I’m alright. Honest.” It was a terrible lie and given how Davix’s heavy brow lowered over his bright eyes she knew, just by looking at him, that he _knew_ she was lying. He didn’t question it, much to Sophie’s sheer relief; she simply wasn’t in the right mindset to discuss her dream, if the retune had affected her at all or even how she was feeling right at that moment.  Hell, she didn’t even _know_ how she was feeling so how could she talk about it?

Davix turned away, the tarp folded neatly under his arm as he ducked under the overhang and she watched him go, longingly, like she was watching her date leave the table to visit the bathroom. But there was more to it than just that. There was more to this dull ache in her chest that ached so relentlessly when she looked at him. A strange - yet not unwelcome - agony weighed on her already heavy heart.  

Another scar she would no doubt add to the rest.

“We should get going,” he called dully, his shadow finally leaving the alcove and exposing her to the light of Shanxi’s bright sun.

“Yeah… we should…” she muttered to herself, gathering up her pack from the now long burnt out fireside and slinging it over her shoulder.

Was it crazy to wish that this journey would never end?

She didn’t quite know. 

Maybe the delirium was finally setting in, but still she gazed around the overhang mournfully, knowing that something significant had changed here, be that for the better or not was yet to be seen.

* * *

She’d been acting strange – well stranger than usual – ever since she’d woken that morning. Davix asked the obvious question more than once but it was very clear that Sophie was reluctant to engage in conversation. Inevitably the tank ride was now suffocating in a thick silence save for the odd directional order coming from the passenger side of the tank and the rumble of the engine.

Sophie wasn’t crumpled into her corner like he’d expected her to be. Her body was loose, deflated in a sense yet she looked surprisingly comfortable in her chair as she rested her face in a single hand and gazed dreamily out the window. She held her little mountain flowers in her hand that had long since died, the once pretty petals now rusty and dry. He wasn’t entirely sure why she was holding on to them and he thought idly that he should simply replace them when he next got the chance.

It was weird, really. Even though there was quiet it was strangely pleasant and though she’d been acting oddly and perhaps a little distant that morning, Sophie didn’t seem upset - or whatever Davix was construing as upset in human terms – perhaps more thoughtful than distressed. But still, he wanted to talk to her, to ask what she saw in her mind the night before.

_To ask if she’d heard his confession._

_To ask if she felt the same._

But Davix couldn’t shake the feeling that he had somehow made it all worse. That confessing how he felt about her in such an unorthodox way was possibly the worst thing he could have done, and yet her sleep-time motions – coupled with her scent - had told him different.

She’d woken at least twice in the night, perhaps not consciously so and each time she’d said his name, each time she’d re-established her position within his arms and each time she’d sighed so sweetly when he’d pulled her back in. There was little doubt that she’d _wanted_ to be there coiled within his embrace. The spirits knew that _he_ wanted her there.

He sensed her torment when he sang to her - her regret and sheer grief - manifested through circumstances she had no power over, and he had merely responded in kind but there was no qualm that his response had an effect on her. There were no nightmares to be had that evening, she hadn’t jumped and jolted in his arms. Ruban, for now at least, was at peace. So, there was little doubt that Davix’s rebalancing had been effective in that sense.

He thought then to simply chew the barrel of the gun (or something to that effect…?) and just ask her. Before he’d had the chance to open his mouth and begin the conversation, however, the tank jolted on uneven ground causing the pistol Davix had returned to her to spring from its holding place on the dash board and into Sophie’s lap.

There was a moment of breathless panic between the two of them and the air in the cab seemed to thicken as neither were certain if the gun had its safety on or not. The fear that the thing would just go off while he was driving was a heavy concern – if only a brief one. Sophie sighed heavily, seemingly exasperated by the whole ordeal and snatched the gun out of her lap with the intention of putting it away. The thing wasn’t being used right now – it was, after all, a relic of her now deceased father – so it was best it was put out of harm’s way.

Sophie reached forward and opened the dash compartment with an irritated huff only to have the entirety of its contents spill out into the footwell. Davix only saw out of the corner of his eye as she tried in vain to stop the bric-a-brac from spewing out of the seemingly endless storage space like one would try to stem a high-pressure leak.

“For _fuck_ sake!”  She spat furiously as the spillage finally came to an end, though not without glaring at Davix who simply couldn’t contain the laugh that bounced out of his throat at her reaction. Hearing the dainty lady cuss was, in short, hilarious. Spirits, he could happily sit there and let her insult him all day.

“You made a mess, Sophie…” Davix chuntered from his side of the tank, to be rewarded yet again by another one of Sophie’s menacing (and rather sexy) shocking-blue scowls, which only had him trying to pull his mandibles back to his face in a frail attempt to hide his amusement.

“No shit,” was all she said as she slipped from her seat and into the footwell to sort through the plethora of crap now littering the Mako floor.

She sifted through the mess – by what Davix could gather with only fleeting glances it was mostly yellowed papers and other useless bits and pieces. She tossed the rubbish about the floor until she eventually seemed to find something of interest. Sophie sat back against the seat while still crumpled in the footwell and pulled the shiny object to her face for a closer look.

It looked like a bottle of some kind, the liquid it contained clear like water.

“Find something interesting?”

She didn’t answer right away, choosing instead to investigate her find a little longer before finally lifting herself back into her seat and flashing him a wide-toothed smile – the first she’d given him since the day before. There was something deep and sultry about that smile though, her eyes seemed to darken even as she presented the bottle to him and it stirred something hot and fluttering deep in his guts.

“We’re getting drunk tonight,” was all she said.

* * *

Once again, the journey had ended for the evening though without the luxury of a cave or overhang nearby to rest in, it was just the pair of them and the surrounding trees. 

With no predatory animals big enough to even consider the challenge of hunting a human - or an enormous turian for that matter - it had long been established that Shanxi was quite a safe place (aside from the invading aliens but that was a whole thing on its own). Sleeping out in the open was a viable option and this far west – away from the human habitats and the main war zone at the centre of the colony, it was safe to say that they wouldn’t be found, at least not easily. Nothing was popping up on the Mako’s radar to suggest they were being tracked at least.

Who were they not to take advantage of this calm, at least while it lasted?

Dinner had been quite a simple meal, as they all were. Davix had settled for a packet of what looked like freeze-dried noodles that was put on the heat to boil in water – though it had a smell about it much like herbal tea – and Sophie had been given a piece of meat that tasted remarkably like chicken. She found out soon after eating that the bird had been the mother of the eggs she had devoured the day before much to her horror and Davix’s apparent amusement. But a girl had to eat. Facts were facts and it was rather delicious, though this probably boiled down to the fact that she was ravenous at the time.

With the food consumed and the fire still bright and giving off its delicious heat, the drinking had started and with the booze came the bravery. There was such a thing as  _Dutch courage_ , at least where Sophie came from. It turned out that the original driver of the Mako had a taste for Russian vodka and despite its acidity and the fact that she winced with each nip, the alcohol was going down a treat.

And not just with her.

It seemed Davix was quite fond of his vintage _murifa black_ Sophie had previously used as a disinfectant, or  _brandy_  to anyone else. It didn’t really occur to Sophie until that moment that she hadn’t really seen him drink before – or rather she hadn’t paid as much attention to _that_ action like she did to him eating - and he didn’t drink quite like she did; he lapped at a spout that jutted out of the bottle in his hand with his odd blue tongue. He drank like a hamster and it was quite adorable to watch.

The conversation had started with small talk; the weather, how soft the grass was here, how good the food was tasting today and how brightly the fire was burning – a good omen if ever there was one. But it quickly evolved as conversations do yet it was quite apparent that Sophie was the one leading the way for the most part, not that this was an issue. She loved to talk.

“ _Krogan…?_ ” she asked, completely perplexed as Davix spoke like she should know exactly what he was talking about. She had made the mistake of asking how he’d lost his claw but the tall tale Davix was painting was quite entertaining, if not a little confusing at times.

“Yeah, they’re big, _really_ big, like tanks. Real ugly things they are.” He made a motion with his huge three-digit hands as though to emphasize the sheer size of the creature he was attempting to describe, albeit poorly. “Well, the bastard bit me as I went to slug him right in the face, ripped my talon right out.”

“And now you wear it around your neck like a trophy.” Sophie wasn’t asking a question, simply stating a fact as she motioned towards the claw dangling over Davix’s bare chest with her bottle of Russian vodka.

He didn’t answer as such and just looked down at himself while fondling the claw in his fingers like he’d never really looked at it before.

Sophie hummed at him, considering his story and how he seemed to stutter at certain parts of it. He was a bit merry from the brandy - the dilation of his pupils made heavy suggestion to this - but there was a little more to it than all that.

He was lying.

“How’d you _really_ lose it?” she asked eventually with a sly smile. Sophie was unable to contain the laugh she felt in the pit of her belly when he suddenly looked up at her, his eyes so wide with unmistakable, universal shock.

“Oh my god, Davix, look at your face!!” She chortled, rolling back on a single hand as she pointed at him with the other.

“How’d you know I was lying?!” Davix’s voice was shrill but not offended which only made the whole _‘my finger was bitten off by an alien’_ conversation just that bit more amusing.

“Call it woman’s intuition,” she fibbed through her giggles, and tapping a single finger of her free hand on her temple before motioning towards him with her bottle again. “Go on, the truth this time.”

“The truth isn’t even interesting…”

“Just tell me!”

Davix just sat and stared at her for a while, his wide purple eyes flickering about her face before he shifted on his rump and seemingly braced himself for the information he was about to spew just as Sophie was about to take another nip of her vodka.

“I had a few too many one night…” he started sluggishly, his voice low and his harmonics a mere thrum in the breeze, though Sophie noticed he was glancing at her out of the corner of his eye as he spoke. “… and I trapped my hand in a skycar door. It really hurt too… I cried a little…”

Sophie couldn’t stop it, and the booze flew out of her nose, making her eyes water as the laugh left her like a sneeze. She couldn’t breathe, the sheer force of her guffaw’s forcing her to double over and hit the soft ground with her hand. The mere idea coupled with the unexpected vision of this enormous, heavily built avian man – Davix, no less - holding his hand and sobbing over it was just too much.

“Hey… it’s not funny!” Davix scolded, his statement contradicting the humour hanging in his tone as he spoke. He was laughing at her _laughing at him_.

“Oh… oh god… oh it is,” she managed to splutter eventually looking up at him, her eyes blurry from her tears of nothing but pure amusement. “You… you’re hilarious… oh god… my sides. Oh god I’m hurting, so much, so much. It hurts. You’re _hurting_ me!”

The laughter died down after a time, though it took quite a while for Sophie to quell the giggles in her tummy each time she thought back to that image of Davix crying over his claw in the back of some taxi cab. She wasn’t even aware that turians could cry in the same sense a human could, perhaps they couldn’t, and he meant something a little different to what Sophie was seeing in her mind. Either way it was quite funny, but it was time to move the conversation along.

And there was one question she was _dying_ to ask.

“So,” she started, lifting both knees and leaning back on a single hand. “Is there a  _missus Davix_?”

Davix looked at her with that quizzical flutter of his pierced mandibles causing the rings to clink together while furrowing his brow plates.

“ _Missus_ …?” he repeated dully with a soft shake of his head.

“Yeah you know, missus, girlfriend, wife, significant other?”

“Amicae,” he corrected with a flare of both mandibles and a slow blink that caught her off guard momentarily.

Sophie paused then. She’d never heard that word before but there was something fundamentally beautiful about it, about the way he’d said it and the way he looked at her just now.

“ _Amicae_ …” she repeated carefully, enjoying how the word felt on her tongue. Sophie was pulled from her musings when Davix began to elaborate.

“An amicae is generally what you said,  _significant other_ or  _intimate partner_. You could also apply it to a very close friend but that’s a bit old fashioned nowadays.” The lilt to his mandibles suggested a shrug as he took another sip of his brandy before lowing it back to his lap.

“And to answer your question, no. I don’t have an amicae, nor am I really looking.”

Sophie felt her eyes narrow at his statement. There was no sadness to his tone and she couldn’t detect a direct lie in what he said, but something in her gut told her he was withholding something. It wasn’t a lie, but not a whole truth either. She amazed herself with how well she picked up on these little signals of his, that there was far more than met the eye with this beast of a man that sat beside her. But he surprised her little when he continued.

“I thought I had but she proved me wrong,” his sub-harmonics betrayed the flat tone of his main voice with a high whine that twittered in his throat, though Sophie thought it best not to draw attention to the sound this time. But still, Davix piqued her curiosity once more, and she was, in short, dying to know who this former  _amicae_  of his was and why it was no more.

“What happened?” the question slipped from between her lips before she had the chance to really process them and she was rewarded with a quick turn of Davix’s head as he settled his bright eyes on her with a defeated chuckle.

“Nah,” he responded eventually with an expression Sophie could now translate as a grin. Davix lowered his gaze again, crossed his huge legs and planted his still rather full bottle of brandy in the new space he’d created. “You don’t want to hear that story.”

She contemplated what he  _really_  meant; perhaps the truth was that he didn’t particularly want to tell it. But curiosity was getting the better of her. She’d push one more time, if he showed resistance again then she would drop it.

“Try me, maybe we can compare scars, hm?”

He didn’t bother to look up this time, though Sophie was certain he was contemplating her query before he finally answered.

“Her name was Trina,” he started wistfully, harmonics low and allowing his main voice to dominate his words. He looked up then, purple eyes glazed as he peered into the trees ahead. He was back there, living whatever memory he had of this woman. “She was beautiful, tall, lithe. She had eyes the colour of Trebia and plates like polished silver…”

If Sophie remembered correctly, Trebia was the name of Palaven’s sun. This fact was very quickly squirreled away into the archives of her mind as she leaned forward, as if somehow it would help her better listen to him. The sadness returned to his tone as he spoke of this Trina, and she waited eagerly for him to continue.

“… I couldn’t believe my luck at first. Why someone as beautiful as her would be interested in a brute like me… heh… I should have trusted my intuition.”

“What happened?” Sophie asked softly, feeling that he needed the encouragement.

He hesitated and flicked a clawed finger against the nozzle of his bottle, his mandibles twitching oddly on either side of his face. It was unclear what emotion he was expressing, though the odd click deep in his throat suggested annoyance or perhaps embarrassment.

She couldn’t be certain.

“She knew how to talk, skilled in subterfuge. Not a trait revered amongst turians, and she was greedy with it.” Davix snuffed hard through his nose and shifted irritably, though not once daring to look Sophie’s way, not once. “I was born into a … _powerful_ family. We were regarded with great respect and honour in Cipritine, still are, and she wanted in on that.”

Sophie watched him nod his head as he elaborated, fondling the drinking tube on his bottle.

“Problem was that I was besotted with her, she knew that, and she used my obsession to convince me that I could do no better. That I was too _ugly_ to love … So, I was easy to manipulate I suppose. An easy target to get close to what she really wanted.” He chuckled then, unhappily before continuing. “My brother sniffed her out long before I could ever hope to, and she retreated into the Terminus Systems after being found out as a fraud. I never saw her again. For the better, I guess…”

He sighed, a long, tired breath that had Sophie regret pressuring him into telling his story. It wasn’t fascinating, or interesting or funny like his ‘talon’ tale. It was heart-breaking and seeing this creature now, hanging his head so low, so shamefully it was clear without even knowing just how devastated he still was at being treated no better than filth.

“She tore me to pieces…”

A silence settled between them as Sophie absorbed what just told her and how awfully he’d been treated. It was no wonder he preferred the idea of celibacy over going through that again.

“I’m sorry she did that to you. You didn’t deserve that. Besides, it seems clear to me that she doesn’t know what she’s talking about… _too ugly to love_ , I ask you.” Sophie, again, was careful to keep her voice calm; if she’d learned anything about this man from the past few days, it was that he much preferred to be spoken to softly. She lacked the turians’ skill for singing, but Davix responded well when her voice was gentle – as he seemed to be.

He turned towards her then, that questioning flutter to his mandibles followed by a low trill deep in his throat. It was the only response he offered to her, and it prompted her to continue though she idly noted how her voice had raised an octave.

“I happen to think you’re quite handsome, and I mean that. So, screw whatever poison she was trying to feed you, it’s not true.” Sophie didn’t think she’d ever spoken so honestly to him as she was doing right then. She surprised herself with how angry Davix’s experience made her feel. How could someone treat another person so abhorrently? It was beyond her.

Davix sat and stared at her for a while before he shook his head and turned away.

“Yeah… okay then,” he muttered with an odd chuckle as he lifted his bottle of brandy to his mouth and licked at the tip a few more times. He didn’t believe her, but that was no real surprise if what he just told her was anything to go by. Sophie chose not to challenge him, however. Sometimes these types of things were better left alone.

“What about you?” He asked, seemingly discontented by the silence, a little flatly but harmonised by his subvocals, suggesting he wasn’t entirely disengaged from the conversation. “You got a story of crippling emotional baggage to rival mine?”

There was humour hanging in his tone and Sophie couldn’t help the smile that tugged at a single corner of her mouth, though she didn’t bother to connect with his gaze, choosing instead to fiddle with her bottle as Davix had done with his.

It was her turn to spill her guts.

“James,” she started, lifting both knees and hooking her elbows around them. “We met in high school but we didn’t really start going out until my final semester at college. He was tall, strong, and ruggedly good looking. All the girls wanted him… but he chose me.” Her voice petered out to little more than a drone as she spoke, but she noticed out of the corner of her eye that Davix was leaning forward – both elbows resting on bent knees - while he looked at her, much like she did mere moments ago.

Sophie turned to look at him then, noting the knowing flare of both his mandibles but other than that he didn’t move, and he looked at her curiously with those beautiful purple eyes.

“I did one better than you though,” she chuckled as she pointed at him with her bottle. “I married him. And it was good at first, _really_ good. We bought a house together, made it our home, we had good jobs, two cars in our driveway. Living the American dream, we were… but then he wanted children and when I told him I wasn’t ready things…” she felt herself hesitating and it was with a heavy swallow that she forced herself to continue, though she could no longer look at the man sitting next to her. “… things changed.”

“How so?”

It was funny how Davix could do that with only his voice - pull her out of her addled stupors she was finding herself in more and more these days as she started to contemplate her life, her decisions, and the mess she was making all on her own.

“He became… not violent, that’s the wrong word. He never raised a hand to me, not once. But his attitude changed. He made me feel guilty for having friends, and somehow, he managed to alienate me from them. He’d tell me how _unwomanly_ I was for not wanting to be a typical wife, for not waiting on him hand and foot, for not wanting children… I mean, I didn’t say I _never_ wanted them just… not right then, that’s all…”

She was aware that she was rambling, and it was with a shaky sigh and another nip from her vodka that she endeavoured to settle her nerves, and her stomach. The attempt was frail, but it was definitely better than nothing.

“The final straw came when he started to hold me down and force me to perform my _‘wifely duties.’_ I couldn’t handle it anymore … so I left.”

Davix made a sound that she’d never heard before, reminiscent of a growl but louder, more guttural. The noise was so deep, so primal that she felt it rather than heard it and it forced her to spin her head on her shoulders to look at the source.

Mandibles pinned tightly to his mouth - an expression he made when either caught off-guard or upset - Davix looked at her with darkened eyes and even then, without asking, Sophie knew he understood what she was talking about. And it only occurred to her at that moment that he was the first person she had ever spoken to about her ordeal. For all this time she kept it locked up deep in her chest.

“It wasn’t enough that he separated you from people you cared about, that he couldn’t control what you did with your body. So, he _raped_ you?” His voice was low, _angry_ and his words unabashed, disgusted by what he heard, his response was enough to knock Sophie off balance. It wasn’t until that moment that she had ever truly looked at how James had treated her during the final months of her deteriorating marriage - to a man she thought was her soul mate, God how _wrong_ she was. It seemed Davix viewed it much differently to her.

She didn’t know what to say, and a part of her wished she’d kept that final detail firmly caged inside to fester away into the rest of her memories. She simply sat there, unable to maintain eye contact with her pseudo-councillor and allowed the tears to well in her eyes. Why now, after all this time of coping with it all, of putting it all to bed knowing she would never have to lay eyes on him ever again, knowing he couldn’t hurt her anymore… Why did it hurt so much now?

“I…” she hesitated, the realisation of what Davix had said hitting her hard, a blow to the gut as she slowly turned away and felt the heat rise in her throat. “…I never looked at it like that before…”

That silence came again, heavy, vast, and hanging thickly in the air before she found the courage to continue, to finish what she started. A problem shared was a problem halved, right?

“…He made me hate myself…” she laughed, a guffaw dulled by the trees, but it eased a pressure she felt in her chest as a single tear rolled down her cheek. She viciously wiped it away with the heal of her hand before she hissed out her final thought on the subject, “ _Bastard_ …”

There was something that felt good about letting it all out, something so good with finally being respected enough by another, to be listened to. Sophie let out a relieved sigh, feeling that dull weight in her chest caused by that cage of memories shatter inside of her. It felt good and it was Davix’s voice again that caused her to glance his way.

“Why are you _really_ here, Sophie?”

She looked at him for the longest time then, taking note that he required an answer and knowing that the obvious one wasn’t what he was looking for. He didn’t care that she was here to dissect and research his people, he already knew there was far more to it than just that. If Davix was anything it was intuitive, and it was astonishing how well he could read her even with only knowing her for a few days. He was handsome, strong, and well spoken, but he was also intelligent, gentle, and kind – everything that contradicted what she was taught about these alien invaders.

 _He was no monster_.

“I guess…” she started with a shrug and a coy smile, “… I’m running away.”

Davix hummed a chuckle at that, not in a sense that he found her comment amusing but that he related to it somehow, perhaps he did though one could hardly call Shanxi a paradise. Who in their right mind would want to escape to this piss hole of a colony?

“If I ever meet this James of yours…” Davix began, though he didn’t turn to look at her until he was about to speak again. “… I’ll eat him for you.”

She laughed at that with a dry snort - an obvious joke considering his dextro-amino needs - as a sudden calm descended on them both and the atmosphere began to lift, causing the mood to lighten as a result. Suddenly it was just the pair of them amongst the trees again. Just him and her and the fire crackling while the booze buzzed pleasantly behind her eyes.

“I’d like that,” Sophie responded fondly, “And if Trina ever crops up again, you send her to me and I’ll scratch her eyes out. She obviously doesn’t know how to use them.”

It was Davix’s turn to chuckle this time, and he did so with a bow of his head and a humorous flare of both mandibles before he looked at her again with those gorgeous amethyst eyes of his, the anger now completely dissipated as he lifted his bottle to her.

“I’ll drink to that,” he said softly, his mandibles flared in what she could only see now as a smile.

* * *

The morning had started relatively like any other, though it seemed Sophie was a little worse for wear—the booze from the night before the culprit, no doubt. Davix could only assume that either she wasn’t much of a drinker or humans in general didn’t absorb alcohol all that well. Either way there was a lot of head holding and pained groaning coming from her general direction for the best part of the morning.

It didn’t take too long for her head to clear and before either of them really knew it they were on the road with Sophie balking her coordinates, and he simply nodding and obeying her direction. The day was pleasant, as they all were with Shanxi’s sun beating down on the tank which took away the chill gifted to him via his missing door.  That was until the display sitting just behind the steering column began to alarm and flash like his whole world was about to come to an end.

“Sophie? _Sophie_?!” he called, a little panicked, to his travelling companion who was almost sitting on his lap a little quicker than he’d anticipated in order to gain a better view of the dash display. “I can’t read the symbols, what’s happening?”

She pretty much did sit on him then, if only to get closer still to the flashing lights behind the column. It would have been an ideal opportunity to bask in the warmth of her hand on his thigh were it not for the blaring of the tanks alarm, so shrill that it was hurting his ears and forcing him to squint against it.

“It’s the temperature gauge,” Sophie said dully before turning back towards Davix who was still attempting to drive with the absolute knowledge that her hand had slipped dangerously close to his crotch.  “I think the engine is overheating…”

Not that his arousal was even a glimmer in his minds eye at that moment.

“Great… just great,” he hissed through a clenched jaw and clapping both mandibles against his mouth in annoyance as he pulled the tank over and shut off the ignition. “I guess my teeth are going to fall out of my head next, polish this whole journey off quite nicely!”

Sophie had moved back to her seat on the other side of the tank before giving him a quizzical look in response to his latest statement.

He waved a dismissive hand at her. “A figure of speech, a typical nightmare. Teeth falling out… you get those?” his words were fragmented much like his state of mind, but he watched with a mild pleasure as Sophie’s expression softened and a smile graced her pretty face.

“Sure, being naked in public is also a good one,” she nodded, though not without giving Davix an eyeing over once he removed himself from the tank and realised what she’d just said with one of those nervous, tight-lipped grimaces of hers.

“As you can see, I got that one covered…” he deadpanned with the show of a hand as though he was presenting himself to her.

He heard the tell-tale click of the passenger side door opening and closing along with the shudder of the tank as Sophie left the vehicle and he made his way around the front. The hood was broken, had been since he’d popped it open back at the human testing facility and it was a swift kick against the main grill that forced the thing to spring upwards. The moment it did so, the smoke billowed out of the engine space and the wind carried it into Davix’s face enough for him to splutter and cough against it while feebly waving both hands in a frail attempt to disperse the fog.

“Is it broken? Can you fix it?” Sophie asked as he somehow managed to walk out of the smog and back towards her and the nearside of the tank.

“No idea,” was his simple reply, much to Sophie’s chagrin judging by the fall of her face. “I can’t get near the thing while it’s billowing like that. It’s too hot to examine without the proper gloves anyway.”

“So… what do we do now?”

Davix opened the passenger side door and reached inside before he answered, “Well, we’re not going anywhere for a while so…” He pulled out the pheaston rifle he’d given to Sophie back during their little adventure with the horrible husk things. “… fancy a little target practice?”

* * *

There was something so very arousing about a woman holding a gun; or was it just her holding that pheaston that did it for him? Davix didn’t quite know, but the fact that she was strong enough to hold it at all considering the sheer size of the thing was almost enough to have him un-plating right there and then. Almost, but not quite; he had enough self-discipline about him not to let himself get too carried away in the moment.

The bed sheet around his waist left very little to the imagination as it was, without the added problem of getting excited.

A target had been carved into a nearby tree trunk and Davix showed her how to properly wield the weapon without it causing unnecessary harm to herself and Sophie had been – much to Davix’s surprise – quite eager to learn how to play with her new toy. It was something to pass the time while the engine cooled.

She’d only ever fired the thing once and it seemed that shot had been somewhat of a fluke in the heat of the moment. A good job by all accounts--Davix would have been long dead several times over now were it not for Sophie and her quick thinking.

And her bravery--Spirits knew she should have been born turian.

Talk had mostly been about the weapon itself, how ammo-blocks were used as ammunition instead of individual bullets and how thermal clips were inserted and ejected from the rifle to prevent overheating. He also explained how usually he’d carry a converter on his person to adapt spare weapon parts and mods into omni-gel, a concept that Sophie had found quite fascinating, much to his delight.

There was something especially satisfying about talking to her. At first Davix struggled to place exactly what it was that made him feel that way, but it was this instance that had him finally realise just why he enjoyed their little chats. She wasn’t just humouring him. The glimmer in her shocking blue eyes when she asked him questions was pure, innocent fascination. She enjoyed listening to him and her follow-up questions only confirmed that she was taking in what he was telling her.

It felt nice to be in the company of someone that genuinely wanted to know about him, his life, and wanted to pick at his knowledge. It felt _really_ nice.

He was going to miss her terribly when their journey came to its inevitable end.

The conversation hadn’t stayed on the gun for too long, and had evolved into other areas of interest, as it always did. And it seemed that Davix was, yet again, the source of that interest.

“So, Davix, I never asked…” Sophie started, poised again to ready herself to fire the rifle in that odd way she’d been doing for the best part of the lesson. “…how old are you, if you don’t mind me asking?”

Davix sat against a rock to Sophie’s left and he couldn’t help but laugh at the posture she’d reverted to.

“Why are you standing with your legs wide like that? Pheastons are energy weapons, they don’t have much recoil…” He wasn’t ignoring her initial question, but he couldn’t ignore her strange stance. She was holding the rifle as though it would suddenly turn on her and bite her.

“I know that!”

“Then put your feet together, you’re going to fall over.”

“The damn thing is loud, alright? Standing like this helps.”

“What? How can standing with your legs apart like that possibly help with the sound?”

“It just does okay? Anyway, you haven’t answered my question.”

Davix hadn’t forgotten, and he chuckled a little as Sophie shuffled her feet together, if only a little more to gain greater purchase on the ground before firing at the target--not quite in the centre, but not far off. She was quite good at this.

“How old am I?” Davix mused lifting a single knee and resting his elbow on it. “Take a guess.”

She looked at him then, a picture of perplexity as she eyed him over and shook her head before answering.

“Well, I dunno, that’s why I’m asking… how long do turians live for anyway?” She asked in what sounded like mild annoyance and went back to aiming the rifle at the tree opposite them, taking a single shot and huffing when she missed the target Davix had carved out for her.

“You tell me, _you’re_ the turian expert, right? I’m just a mechanic.” Davix was careful to keep his voice and his harmonics in line and as nonchalant as he could, if only to get more of a rise out of her. If there was one thing he enjoyed, it was getting under Sophie’s skin. She was attractive anyway, but even more so when she had that fire in her eyes. He noticed it back in the tank the day previous when she found the bottle of human booze in the footwell compartment. And he liked it, he like it a lot. He liked it more than he should have.

Sophie turned to him then, and the snort left his nose before he’d had the chance to register he was even amused, but it was a dead giveaway to her that Davix was playing a game. And the look on her face showed how unamused she really was.

“That’s not fair, I know the difference between a juvenile and an adult but I haven’t been studying turians long enough to determine actual ages yet. Just give me a clue?”

He wasn’t even sure why she wanted to know his age. Spirits, he wasn’t even sure how to put an age on a human, the only thing he truly knew about them for an absolute certainty was that they were very hard to kill in combat. If humans were anything at all, resilient was it.

“A clue? Well, I’m an adult if that helps.”

She lowered the pheaston once more and pulled a face at him, her nose scrunching on one side while she contorted her mouth weirdly in a half smile, half grimace.

“No, _really_?”

She was being sarcastic, but two could play at that game and Davix was having way too much fun to just let this one go.

“Sure, I am,” he answered dully while hooking both arms around the back of his head and crossing his legs as he did so, “My dick is much bigger than a juvenile’s anyway.”

Sophie seemed to pause then, her entire being trapped in some time loop as he watched her attempt to digest the information while a blemish of colour began to creep into her features. But she didn’t respond verbally even after her blue eyes darted towards him after a time.

“What? You don’t believe me?” He asked, unfurling his legs, spreading them wide on the grass as he sat up and rested his elbows on his knees. “Do you want to see for yourself? I’ll show you if you want.” Davix had purposefully lowered his tone, looking at her now from beneath his brow plates as he wiggled both mandibles at her provocatively. That initial dusting of colour, a wonderful hue of pink that flushed her face suddenly darkened and bled onto her throat as she swallowed and allowed her eyes to drift to his crotch before she dragged them back to his face.

Spirits, she was _gorgeous_.

Simply _gorgeous_.

A moment passed between them and he was almost certain she was about to call his bluff – spirits only knew how he would even begin to handle that one, he was only joking after all – but she didn’t take the bait and eventually she turned away sharply, huffing in irritation.

“You really are disgusting, Davix!”

He laughed at her again, but deep down he was quite elated she didn’t ask to see what he had between his legs. Though he wasn’t coy about revealing his body to anyone, he was often quite turned on for Sophie and after his severe blushing session only a couple of cycles back, he didn’t feel quite ready to expose himself that much just yet. Not to her, at least.

“You had to think about it though,” he teased, getting to his feet and meandering over to where Sophie was poised with the rifle in hand. He crouched next to her and helped her reposition the gun. “You’re holding it too low, it’s going to hurt your arms after a time if you hold it that way. A little higher like this, let it rest in the hollow of your shoulder.”

He felt her sigh next to him, not an amorous sound, but one of tension relief as though the action would help her focus; she looked back down the sights of her weapon. Then she started talking again.

“Seriously though what’s the size of your…” He caught her looking down at him again before refocusing on the tree ahead, “… your genitalia got to do with how old you are?”

He hummed amusedly at her irritation and it was at that point he decided it was probably better to start humouring her curiosity.

“Nothing, I suppose, I was just messing around. You still have to guess though,” he noted the exasperated stare she shot him before he continued. “We live between a hundred and forty to a hundred and sixty galactic years. I’m not sure how long that is on Earth. Just assume that it’s about the same, hm?”

Sophie lowered her gun, placing it carefully on the ground at her feet. Her attention was instantly pulled from target practice and refocused entirely on him. Davix was still crouched, even as she cupped his face so gently in her hands, though the action was by no means sensual. Her brain reverted to her scientific roots and she took the information he fed her. She processed it, making a calculated guess of his age.

Davix was now her specimen - a live one, at that.

“You guys have a similar life span to humans then, really. _Interesting_ ,” she muttered while first rolling his head from one side to the next, then reaching over to pull at his crest, sticking her small fingers into the gaps of his mouth and then deciding to jam her thumb into his eye socket.

“Yeah, ow, Sophie, live turian, not a dead one…?”

“Oh sorry… I got a little excited there.”

She stood back then, her hands on her hips, her legs cocked to the side with a curious tilt to her head before she hummed and began to deliver on her minutes of research.

“You’re different from other turians so this is sorta hard for me…” she started, lifting a hand and tapping a finger on her lips. “… you seem in peak condition, no visible signs of severe wear to the hide, you have all of your teeth and your carapace is only cracked in places where it is required to shift, such as the chest and the large shoulder plates at the back.”

Another moment of contemplation and staring passed. Davix certainly wasn’t complaining about the latter--he quite liked the attention, he realised.

Eventually she deflated, her hands dropping to her sides with yet another frustrated sigh.

“I dunno, twenty-four?”

“What?” Davix couldn’t quite believe what she said, and he laughed deep in his throat as he rose to his feet. “You really think I’m twenty-four? Really? I can’t even remember what I was _doing_ when I was twenty-four, ha!”

“Oh, I’m wrong?”

“By about ten years, yeah. Thanks though, I quite like being mistaken for twenty-four.”

“I told you this was hard! You’re the first of your build I’ve ever seen, and I’ve seen a _lot_ of turians.” She was laughing, which was a good thing. At least she wasn’t embarrassed by being so wrong about his age.

“If galactic and Earth years are nearly the same then I’m only four years younger than you,” Sophie chirped, quickly going back to her rifle and taking stance once again. There was something cheerful about the way she spoke as she returned to her target practice and it was at that moment that Davix thought best to check if the tank was cool enough to examine.

It was nice to just sit and back and chat about nonsense, but there was a task at hand. Wasting time simply wasn’t an option.

“I’m disappointed you weren’t going to make me guess,” he responded with a grin just as he leaned into the cavity of the engine space, which seemed to have cooled off enough for him to touch the parts he needed to look at. He was confident the problem was a simple one to solve.

Davix heard Sophie scoff, causing him to peer at her from between his shoulder plates. She looked back at him, holding the gun over her shoulder like the thing was made for her as she stood with her hips tilted and her free hand on her waist.

 “If there’s one thing you should know about human culture, it’s never to guess a lady’s age,” she scolded with a knowing arch to her brow and a smile hinting on her lips.

Spirits, she was _gorgeous_.

Simply _gorgeous_.

* * *

The vehicle was easily fixed with a simple oil change and some fresh coolant running through its system. As luck would have it, they found both things in the rear of the tank. The Mako seemed to run much smoother since Davix tinkered with it, much better than when they’d initially obtained it from Mt. Myka. Sure, it had a few dings, a missing door, a rather large scorch mark down one side of it and a hood that only popped open when the enormous driver kicked it hard in the nose. But all in all, the journey was getting smoother.

The drive hadn’t lasted long this time--a mere three hours before Davix decided it was time to stop. With him being the only one able to efficiently drive the tank, rest stops were crucial lest he fall asleep at the wheel and kill them both.

But this night was shaping up to be much like the last, again simply out in the field with nothing but the trees surrounding them, with a little bit of drinking and a lot of chatting. The liquor was hitting the spot, and not for the first time. For the past goodness knew how long, the pair of them had been laughing in unison about nothing in particular and the conversation flowed from one nonsensical subject to the next.

“Go on, tell me! You have to have at least one!” Sophie all but chortled while playfully slapping her travelling companion on the arm.

“I don’t, though. I was at the back of the queue when they were giving out talent.” Davix chuckled back, not really reacting to the impact of Sophie’s hand and just leaning a little to the side as she shoved him.

They were talking about party tricks, and it seemed the mega turian didn’t quite understand the question.

“You don’t need _talent_! Talent is like being good at painting or something. This is just something really small.”

“Okay, give me an example.”

“Alright,” Sophie braced herself as though preparing for a huge jump, pivoting on both knees to face Davix before explaining her hidden talent. “I can touch my nose with my tongue, see?”

She demonstrated her point, though she failed to mention that she couldn’t actually reach her nose with her tongue, but she was damn well close.

Davix, however, simply stared at her blankly before responding with equal blandness, “And…?”

“What do you mean, _and_?” she retorted, her mouth dropping open in feigned offense.

Davix lifted both mandibles slowly in his version of a shrug, coupled with a tilt to his head. “I can touch my eye with mine.”

“So, you _do_ have a party trick…”

“All turians can do that so… no, not really…”

“Show me.”

Davix gawked at her for a few seconds as though, again, he didn’t understand what she was saying.

“What?”

“Show me!” Sophie raised an open palm to him “I want to see this mega tongue of yours touching your eye.”

He pulled a face, not an expression Sophie could read this time, but she naturally assumed it was somewhat dismissive before Davix unfolded his maw and his tongue - long, thick and unnaturally blue - writhed out of his jaws like a worm.

He was true to his word and Sophie watched with a strange mixture of fascinated disgust and sheer awe as he lapped his strange azure tongue over his head – not just at his eyes, but his brow as well. There was nothing even remotely sensual about his actions. If anything, he was quite clumsy (possibly brought on by his intake of alcohol) before he pulled his tongue back into his mouth, not unlike one of those mechanical tape-measurers. But despite his ungainliness, something hot stirred in Sophie’s belly at the sight of it – something she was finding difficult to ignore.

She attempted to mask her arousal with an insult.

“Oh wow… that was gross. You’re like a frog!”

“ _Frog…?”_

She erupted again. Just hearing him constantly repeating the words he didn’t understand was, in short, the funniest thing she’d ever known at the moment. Talking to aliens was hilarious, quite possibly enhanced by the booze, but Sophie couldn’t remember the last time she’d laughed so much that her sides ached.

If turians and humans had just sat down with a drink and a chat, there was every chance this war would never had started in the first place.

“I bet kissing _you_ with that tongue is an adventure,” she chortled, purely in jest as she slugged back more of her Russian vodka. She relished in the hot tingle it left at the back of her throat, finding herself mulling over how it was possible that this guy, as gentle and funny as he was, didn’t have a girlfriend.

“Hm, wouldn’t _you_ like to know,” Davix retorted, though despite his answer being delivered in very much the same manner as Sophie’s comment, there was a pregnant pause that followed his words.

Had they taken the joke too far?

Or was there something else burning between them?

The way Davix eventually lifted his eyes to connect with hers told her it was the latter. The mood had shifted so suddenly - no longer light and airy - and the humour all but died within those few seconds. It was replaced instead by something heavy, thick yet not unpleasant, and it was his voice, so deep, flanged, oh so gorgeous, that only added to it and stirred the butterflies deep in Sophie’s stomach.

“Can I tell you a secret?” He was whispering, the harmonics in his throat little more than a faint hum in the air as the camp fire danced in his eyes. She couldn’t look away, so hypnotised by the flames that she didn’t realise how close he’d gotten. He was drunk, so was she, and she could smell the sweet brandy on his breath as he folded a hand around her wrist and pulled her gently onto his lap.

Sophie didn’t fight against him, she had no will to as she merely followed his lead and found herself marinating in his gaze. She didn’t answer him - not verbally - but she gazed back expectantly, enjoying the heat of his hands around her waist. And he spoke eventually, his voice quiet, coy yet simultaneously confident as he lifted a single hand, hooked a large finger under her chin and traced her lips with the pad of his thumb.

“I think you’re beautiful, and I’ve wanted to kiss you for a while.”

It was a new game they were playing. A dangerous one, dangerous and exciting as she felt the heat pool in her core at his words as they drew ever closer. But still, his confession all but knocked the wind out of her lungs. Her heart was in her throat and her mind foggy at the sudden realisation that the song he’d sung to her not two nights ago was _real_.

The emotions she felt so strongly were not just hers and hers alone. That this man, this beautiful creature staring at her, who wanted her as she wanted him, had opened his encrypted heart to her.

Even after all he’d been through.

The torment his wretched ex-lover had subjected him to.

He’d opened up to her.

To _her_.

_"My one, my love."_

Sophie would not deny him, and she took the lowering of his hand from her face back to her waist as her signal to respond.

“So, how do turians…” she paused, nipping her lower lip with her teeth as she raised a hand and traced a single finger along the hard ridges of Davix’s mouth. He responded with a slight tilt of his head and a gentle flick of the tip of his tongue against the pad of her finger. She was whispering, a secret just for them, a secret they both wanted to share so desperately, and Sophie sighed hotly as she felt her body lie flush against his, her hands falling to the hide of his throat. “… how do _you_ kiss without lips?”

She felt his hands flex a little tighter around her waist in response to her question. His sharp claws grazing oh so delightfully against her rear as he did so, his thumbs rubbing over the jut of each hip, causing her to roll them softly against him, and he looked at her, gaze intense. His purple eyes hazed with desire for this little human sitting in his lap.

They weren’t so different from humans, these turians, these invaders from the stars. They wanted the same things, and they lusted just as passionately as any human. And she could see the lust within him, swimming inside those beautiful amethyst eyes.

They were the same.

Him and her.

Together.

_Her one, her love._

Davix didn’t answer, not with words. Instead, he simply trilled deep in his throat as he removed a single hand from her waist and used it to grasp her wrist. He lifted her hand, his long digits splayed over hers as he pressed the pads of her fingertips against the thin, hard edge of his mandible.

He didn’t lift his eyes from hers.

Not once.

He was showing her. He was showing her how to kiss him, and he did so with such deliberate affection - the fingers of his free hand grazing so softly against her cheek as he gazed at her with those heavy lidded, hazy purple eyes. And she gazed back, staring into the soul of this beautiful creature beneath her, and she watched – fascinated - as he surrendered himself to her while she basked in the heat flaring deliciously between her legs.

Sophie followed suit with her other hand, gently touching both plates on the sides of his face, feeling them lift so slowly beneath her feathered touch and relishing in the rumbling purr reverberating deep within his thick chest. Davix sighed, a deep exhale of pleasure as he tilted his head and pressed his brow gently against hers as she touched him so intimately.

“Kiss me how you do,” he whispered, his breath hot and heady against her face, his harmonics so intense as he spoke she could feel his desire for her clouding her senses. But she wanted this, more than she’d wanted anything in her life. How had this alien done this to her, how could she be yearning so desperately for a thing that wasn’t even human?

But she didn’t fight, she couldn’t, nor did she want to. She cupped his face in her hands, careful to allow her thumbs to remain on the edges of his mandibles as she leaned in and placed her lips, so softly, so tenderly against the hard ridges of his mouth. He responded immediately, his mouth parted, and he trailed his tongue over her lower lip, enticing her to greet it with her own. He tasted so good, so hot and sweet like cream soda.

He tasted like cream soda.

0o0

Her lips were so soft on the shell of his face, her skin so sweet beneath his tongue, and her kiss so deep that she oozed a passion so unfathomable that Davix had never experienced anything quite like it. But her kiss was fleeting, and she slowly pulled away while allowing her hands back to the plates of his chest.

They sat there for a while, wrapped within each other, not just their arms but their warmth, their emotions and Davix contemplated how he’d never been touched the way Sophie had just touched him. She showed him such affection – a thing so foreign, very _alien_ to him - that it wasn’t until now that he realised how much he yearned for it; for attention, for love, for _her_.

It wasn’t enough. He wanted more.

He wanted it _now_.

Davix couldn’t help himself as he lifted both hands and cupped her face in his palms before he leaned in and crushed her mouth with his. He half expected her to resist, but she didn’t. She melted into him, her attentive, affectionate touches setting his body alight.

Her hands shifted from his face, fingers fluttering over the hide of his throat to reach around his neck and pull him into a heated embrace as he heard her moan into his mouth, her body arching into him to lie flush against his and her legs wrapped tightly around his thin waist. Davix opened his eyes, only briefly to see hers were closed. She was lost in the moment, within the kiss, within him and he allowed himself to sink, to lose himself within her as he wrapped his arms around her and pulled her in deeper still as she kissed him.

Davix allowed himself this, this moment of rapture, of selfish unadulterated desire because he _damn_ well wanted it. There was no getting Sophie out of his system, this was no fleeting infatuation, this was something else and with every slip of her tongue against his he fell a little further, and that was okay.

He wanted this.

He wanted her.

To be her amicae.

To be her _mate_.

And then he saw her, in his minds eye, that vile source of corrupted doubt that fractured this moment he had wanted so badly, that he’d ached for so desperately. It was her voice that broke through the darkness, as it always was.

Trina.

_“I’m you’re only hope,”_

_“No, you’re wrong,”_

_“Face your future with me or face it alone!”_

_“Why are you doing this to me…?”_

_“I will take your ugly heart…”_

_“Trina, please…”_

_“And smash it to pieces…”_

_“Stop it, you’re hurting me!”_

_“Before I let a **monster** like you touch me!”_

_“STOP IT!”_

He thought he heard himself screaming as he was once again plunged deep into the memory of her, her beauty, grace, and her disgusting toxic heart, a silent cry that had him spring his eyes open and see her there on his lap. The poisonous woman who all but tore him in two with her plates of polished silver. And he grabbed her by the shoulders to see her open her eyes but they weren’t amber like the fires of Trebia. They were blue like the rivers of Cipritine, so blue they were shocking, but he pushed regardless.

“No!” He cried as he violently pulled himself away from her, shoving her from his lap and back onto the cold ground. He was startled and panting, his heart hammering so hard in his chest it was painful, but he couldn’t do this. He had to get away, he had to get away from her, from her lies. It was all a lie.

He was too ugly to love.

A monster.

He was meant to be alone. 

_It was all a lie._

* * *

The force of Davix’s push was so strong Sophie feared he would literally throw her to the ground. He didn’t, thankfully, but he sat there, the back of a single hand against his mouth while the other – wrapped firmly around her shoulder – kept her at arm’s length. He was shaking, his entire body aquake with frayed nerves and he panted hard through his mouth, the air whistling between his teeth.

Her mind struggled to comprehend what had happened or why he pushed her away so viciously. He’d been spooked somehow, but Sophie was finding it difficult to determine whether it was her at fault.

“Davix…?” she started, her concern growing while keeping her voice soft as she lifted a hand to place on his still on her shoulder. But he wouldn’t let her touch him. Instead he got to his feet – clumsily – and he looked her with such sadness in his eyes that she swore, not for the first time, that she could feel his sorrow on her skin.

“Spirits… I’m sorry,” was all he said before he hurried towards the tank on the other side of the clearing.

Sophie sat there on the grass for a while, frazzled and still somewhat heated from her first intimate encounter in what felt like a lifetime. Heated, yet empty at the thought that she had somehow done something to drive him away. It seemed like he wanted to be alone, away from her at least and so, for the time being she allowed him this and took some time to reflect on her experience while she tidied the area a little and restocked the fire.

She did little tasks to busy herself while she plucked up the courage to follow him, eventually gaining the resolve to do just that.

Davix had positioned himself up against the back end of the tank, out of view of the fire site, and he just sat there on the ground, doodling in the mud with a long stick. But he’d sensed her coming, head turning sharply in her general direction.

His haunches were up, like a cat on the defensive and he slowly turned away from her as he scrubbed whatever art he was creating in the mud away with his foot. He chose instead to tap the stick in his hand idly on the ground between his legs.

Sophie sat next to him leaning against the rear wheel of the tank. She wanted to reach out, feeling that pressing need to touch him squeezing at her heart, but she didn’t. Instead she just sat and gazed into the distance just as he was doing, sharing a moment of contemplation, a moment of silence amongst friends… if that was what they were calling themselves now. But it was more than that, Sophie knew it and she was certain Davix damn well knew it too. Why else would he have reacted so dramatically to a mere kiss?

She knew why.

“Did she really hurt you that badly?” Sophie asked the obvious question, though something inside herself told her that she would not be granted an answer.

She was right, and his silence was enough to confirm what she was asking, causing her to shift her gaze to him. His eyes were fixed on a spot on the ground near her feet. He was trying to look at her, but he was struggling to do so. And it was then that she realised how strongly she felt for the turian sitting next to her. Being rejected was never nice but being used for a higher gain by someone you trusted, someone you thought you loved, who you believed loved you back was something else. It was a whole new level of hell that Sophie knew all too well.

He couldn’t live like that anymore, he just couldn’t. 

“You can’t base that one experience on how you accept affection from others, Davix.” Sophie kept her voice calm, soothing. She wasn’t trying to belittle him but rather make him see that what happened only moments ago wasn’t her trying to get in, trying to gain anything or trying to hurt him. He had nothing she wanted other than his affection and heaven only knew how much she  _craved_  that, how much she  _ached_  for it, for  _him_.

“Come back and tell me that when you’ve lived your life as a monster like I have.” His main vocals were low, unhappy, hollow, but his harmonics whined in his chest – a keen so heartrending it pulled at her insides as he spoke to her.

“You’re not a monster…”

He looked at her then, those fierce purple eyes flicking upwards as he pulled both mandibles tightly to his mouth. He seemed angry at what Sophie had just said, a baffling concept for something she naturally assumed was something so very far removed from an insult, and the deep growl he omitted only confirmed this.

“Are you blind?  _Look at me_!” His voice quickly morphed into a yell that echoed into the clearing as he jabbed himself hard in the chest with a pointed finger – the finger with the missing claw.

“You should know! You should, Sophie! I saw the way you looked at me back at that testing lab! You think I didn’t? You think I didn’t notice?! It was different then,  _you_  were different! So was I, so was I! How could you want something that hurt you like I did?!” He was slurring his words as he stood harshly and needed to support his body against the tank, not excessively but enough for Sophie to realise that a lot of this anger was being fuelled by the brandy she’d given him again tonight.

_And it tasted like cream soda._

“It was different then, like you just said. That wasn’t you…” Sophie didn’t move from her sitting position, choosing instead to remain in her crouch as Davix started to pace in front of her. He was frustrated with himself, even she could see that, could hear it deep within his sub-harmonics but she failed to see what she could do about it right now. Perhaps sitting and listening to his frustrations, allowing him to air whatever ramblings he held cluttered to his chest would ease his concern. Sophie didn’t know, but surely it couldn’t hurt to let him have his rant.

“Except that it was me! I remember it! I remember! I know I’m scary, it’s fine, it’s fine. I should be used to it by now, but guess what? It still  _fucking hurts_!”

She flinched a little this time as he raised his voice. She knew he was just yelling, he was drunk, upset and embarrassed, but that didn’t make the boom of his angry voice any less alarming.

“Davix, just calm down and sit…”

“Don’t tell me to calm down! _Don’t_!” He pointed at her and gave her a sideways glance as he all but hissed at her which, of course, caused her to lock her lips closed. There was a moment of them just staring at one another before he resumed his pace and continued.

“I’m only good at fixing. Fixing and  _fucking_. That’s it, nothing else! I’m supposed to be alone! I’m supposed to be alone! I’m supposed to  _hate_  you!” Davix looked right at her then, halting in his tracks and he glared with a fury in his eyes that Sophie had only seen back at Mt.Myka. His eyes filled her with an uncertainty that made her blood run cold and her skin crawl as he lifted a hand and pointed at her again.

“And then  _you_  came along, with your pretty face and your…” he waved his hand about in the air as he fought for his words though it became obvious very quickly that he was starting to calm, his voice much softer now as he began to sober up. “… your hair! And you twisted all of that on its face, didn’t you? Didn’t you?!”

“Turned it on its head,” she corrected kindly, and not without a wide smile that tugged relentlessly at each corner of her mouth. The unease she felt only moments ago was all but forgotten as she started to piece together what he was trying to say to her.

She’d opened his eyes, forced him to see that what he saw in his own reflection wasn’t a true one. That he wasn’t  _ugly_  and that he’d been _lied_ to. He wasn’t sure how to put it all into words, but it was endearing to see him try now that his anger started to dissipate. He was finally getting across what he wanted to say even if his communication skills were somewhat lacking at the moment.

He wasn’t angry with her, he was angry at the situation, with the propaganda he’d likely been force-fed before being shipped out here to Shanxi, with Trina for forcing him to doubt himself.

“Tell me then, what did _I_  do, exactly?” she asked, leaning forward and wrapping her arms around her legs as Davix plonked himself back on the ground in front of her and scooted closer. And Sophie heard it then - that song in his chest, so warm inviting and yet so sorrowful as he lifted a hand and hooked a single strand of greasy hair behind her ear.

“I don’t know…” was his answer, his voice now little more than a hum behind the buzzing in his throat.

“… but I wish this was easier… If I were a human it would be, huh?” he chuckled unhappily as his hand fell away from her face and the song in his chest died while his interest lay again at that spot on the ground near Sophie’s feet.

“You don’t want that,” she replied with a despondent chuckle of her own as she reached out and grasped his hands in hers. “Humans suck… besides, you wouldn’t be half as good looking as a human.”

She heard him hum then, an amused sound coupled with the slow flare of both mandibles that she was so thankful for right then as he allowed his long fingers curl around hers. He responded blandly, lifting his beautiful amethyst eyes to meet hers and they shimmered so softly in the moonlight, so softly, “Turians aren’t much better…”

They sat there on the mossy ground together, just the two of them and their tank as they contemplated what had just happened though it was Davix who lowered his gaze first, shamefully, back to the space between them. Sophie grasped his face in her hands gently, lifting his head and forcing their gazes to meet again. She would no longer allow him to hang in defeat, not with her.

There would be no more shame, no more blame.

_No more._

She pulled him towards her, a little surprised that he showed no resistance and she allowed their brows to meet as she ran her thumbs over the deceptively soft shell of his face beneath each eye. He felt like velvet against her fingers and their faces were so close, so close that she could once again smell the sweet brandy on his breath. She was certain he could smell the stench of vodka on hers.

What was this thing she was feeling, this heat in her belly that sank and pooled between her legs? What was this thing she felt for the creature so affectionately combing his fingers through her hair? Was it just lust, or was it something more than that? Sophie didn’t quite know; she’d never felt this way about anyone before, not past boyfriends, not her girly crush at school, not _James_.

Not anyone.

Just him.

 _Her one, her love_.

_Her songbird._

Eventually Davix pulled away though only to reposition, pulling Sophie onto his lap and resting his chin on top of her head with a discontented sigh and a soft rumble of a purr that reverberated through his chest and into her. And he held her so close, so tightly as if he feared she would evaporate if he let her go.

“We can’t pursue this…” his voice was a mere whisper in the cool night-time breeze but even then, she could still hear the grief in his words. He _wanted_ to pursue her, like she did him, he wanted more, they both did but despite how much it hurt to know that this was never going to be, it made sense.

It did.

It made sense.

Didn’t it?

Did they truly want to be star-crossed, was this all they had together?

Was it worth it?

Sophie felt her heart sink in her chest at the thought that this would not last forever. The entire concept that they could be more than what they were was doomed from the start, they both knew this. This man surrounding her, who put her first, protected her, the first man other than her father to truly respect her at all, was not the one for her.

How could something that felt so right be so dangerously wrong? It hardly seemed fair.

But she tightened her grip around his neck anyway, determined that she would never let him go, praying silently that he felt the same.

“I know…” was all she managed in return.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Borrowed the term "Amicae" from Wafflesrock AMAZING fic Kindled. Pretty sure most of you that read this already read Kindled even so if you haven't yet get on that because it is really out of this world!!
> 
> Also, kudos and comments are ALWAYS welcome, please let me know what you think, thank you :3


	8. The Oblivus Anirusha

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Stepping a little into AU territory here. Enjoy ~

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings:   
> Depictions of death, blood, gore and violence in this chapter. Discretion is advised
> 
> Oblivus Anirusha: Palaveni phrase meaning forgotten souls or forsaken, abandoned, left behind. Usually attributed to teams and/or fleets that go missing in action or are cast away from the remaining fleet for one reason or another. A great dishonour. 
> 
> Eo aplis ov erravus eo inver, por mea corda: Ancient Palaveni/old tongue. A verse from an old warriors tale – Raveru Anim/Wander Soul
> 
> Aitnimis: Palaveni phrase that loosely translates into 'they who speaks too much'. Blabber mouth is also acceptable. 
> 
> Princhav: Turian/Cipritian slang: - ‘Cowl-Biter’ one who is unwilling to grow up/acts childishly. 
> 
> Amicae: turian version of a significant other

_The air was cool, it smelled like clean linen – a fresh crisp sheet that blanketed the clearing. He could feel it touching his skin, so softly, gently, how a mother touches her child. The fires of Trebia burned brightly today, brighter than usual, and her heat kissed every inch of his body so sweetly. He would bask here forever, deep in the silver grasses of the valley, lost within the flowers, lost to the world._

_If home was any place, it was here._

_If home was a feeling, this bliss was it._

_A solace in the silence where no one could see._

_And yet there was a piece missing, something small but important, and the notion that this piece was so vital for this moment to truly **become,** forced Davix to open his eyes. He tried to sit up, but, as always, his bulk was too heavy for the simple task to be easy and he groaned with the strain. _

_His teeth were too big for his mouth and they jutted from beneath his mandibles like tusks, the shell of his carapace rough, thorny, and so overgrown he was certain it would take over and consume him eventually. He needed to preen, he needed to preen before it spiralled out of all control – an itch he simply couldn’t scratch._

_He was so heavy again, so heavy it was difficult to breathe, and his joints ached from carrying his own weight. But a notion struck Davix suddenly then; was it his body that weighed him down in the pasture?_

_Or was it his heart?_

_Perhaps finding that one missing piece of his puzzle would answer his question. He wandered the meadow, grass, so silver, so fresh, crunched beneath his feet as he searched for that something, that one piece of himself that was missing. How had he only just noticed it was gone?_

_It had never been there._

_And now instinct demanded he find it._

_It was then that he saw it, a woman, tall, lithe, beautiful, standing before him. She rose out of the ground like a flower in bloom and the plates of her face glistened in Trebia’s life giving light like liquid metal._

_He ran to her, to that source of love and comfort he wouldn’t find anywhere else that he so desperately needed, yet it seemed the closer he got the further away she drifted. That was until the ground opened up beneath him and he fell into the crack._

_His body collided with the dirt and he let out a cry as the hole widened, the ground simply falling away into the black beneath and the woman, a spirit of beauty, vice and deceit made solid, stepped closer._

_Trina._

_She looked down at him with those fiery eyes, like she always did. Like he was the most repulsive thing she’d ever seen while he scrabbled for purchase on the grassy ledge._

_“Just let go,” she suggested huskily with roll to her head and a lift of a single, thin shoulder._

_“No one would care.”_

_He felt the anger rise in his chest then, a deep heat that scorched his flesh accentuated with a deep guttural growl with the absolute knowledge that she was wrong._

_She was **wrong**. _

_“What did I ever do to you?” he asked, his voice hoarse and his harmonics drowned out by her mere presence while she simply stood there and stared through him. “Tell me, Trina! What did I do other than care for you?! I loved you and you threw me away, why?”_

_Her eyes were cold and yet they burned through him as she contemplated her response, and she did so with a simple tilt of her head and a lilt to her mandibles._

_“You did nothing.” Was all she said with that warm smile of hers, the one that used to melt his heart, the one she’d used to crush his soul into a thousand pieces and scatter to the wind. How long had it taken to see that it was a lie?_

_Everything about her was false._

_He hated her._

**_He hated her._ **

_“Then why?”_

_He was barely clinging to the cliff face, his talons straining against his weight as he desperately hung on for his life, and he was slipping. He looked down only briefly, his stomach churning at the sheer blackness that lay beneath his dangling feet. If he was to fall only the spirits knew what would greet him._

_If he was to fall he would surely die._

_It was when he allowed his gaze to return to her that the horror truly sank into his flesh, his blood turned to ice as he gazed upon the woman stood before him now._

_“Sophie…?”_

_She smiled in that typical humanly alien way that humans did; her mouth curling at each corner, her teeth flashing in the sunlight - she was gorgeous, by the spirits was she gorgeous - but the chuckle that left her lips was not hers; it was vicious, evil._

_Her voice was still Trina’s._

_“Because all monsters need vanquishing, my dear, Adavixus. That’s why.”_

_He hated being called that, and the use of his birth name only served to make his skin crawl as he hung there defenceless against her onslaught._

_She pulled a gun on him then, the very same one that Sophie had relinquished back at the testing facility, the very same weapon he had returned to her the night she’d discovered her father had passed away - her last shred of humanity was in her hands…_

_… and she was pointing it at him._

_Davix said nothing as he stared down the barrel, the dread knotting in his guts as his heart turned to dust in his chest. Trina was right, he truly was a fool to think she could be anything more than an enemy and yet the weight in his heart was as heavy as it ever was. His eyes were drawn then to her throat, the bruising worse than it ever had been, the flesh almost black with corruption and he watched in dismay as it began to spread, bleeding in thin infected threads into her beautiful face._

_It was his fault._

_He’d done that to her._

_He’d hurt her._

_Had taken pleasure in it._

_Broken beyond repair._

_It was his fault._

**_It was all his fault._ **

_It was then that the panic truly set in, a sickening sensation of despair so raw, so painful as it forced his flesh to tighten around his bones._

_“Sophie, please! I didn’t mean to hurt you… I’m sorry. I’m so sorry! Please… help me, help me!” he scrambled desperately on the cliff edge again for purchase, feeling the dirt beneath him begin to crumble and give way as he reached for her. He was going to fall, and she was going to stand there and watch him plummet. “Sophie, please! I’m sorry!! You don’t want to do this, it’s not you. It’s not you! Don’t listen to her! Sophie, please! I’m begging you, please! Help me!”_

_She didn’t speak again, her face now completely consumed by the blight from her throat save for those gorgeous blue eyes, and they only stared through him._

_She looked at him like the monster he was._

_She had never looked at him like that before._

_The last sound he heard was the shot of the gun in her hand as she fired, the blinding pain between his eyes white hot as the world around him collapsed._

_\--_

Davix jolted awake with a pained mewl, scrabbling with his powerful legs away from the fire side if only to get away from the pain as both hands habitually flew to his face in search of the wound created by the blast.

It wasn’t there.

He lowered his hands to his eyes, and searched - albeit fruitlessly - for the blood, fingers twitching with frayed nerves. The pain had felt so real, Davix could have sworn by the spirits he felt the bullet puncture his skull and sear through his brain, he could still feel the throb in his head and yet there was no blood, no wound, nothing. Still he sat there scanning his hands, panting, desperately attempting to make sense of it all until he felt small, soft hands touch his face. Davix recoiled from them almost instantly with a startled whimper.

“It’s alright, it’s me, it’s me,” Came the calming voice of his human travelling companion, he could barely see her in the black of the night, the fire log since burnt out. It was a dream, nothing but a dream. Their talk of past lives the other evening had finally caught up with him and Sophie had been stirred into the mix.

It was a dream.

Nothing but a dream.

A grotesque vision of his fuddled mind attempting to make sense of this situation that was making less and less sense as each night dragged on. But still, his heart hammered relentlessly in his chest and his breaths were not coming easily even as he reached out instinctively for her and she grasped his hands firmly in hers.

It took a few moments, but his body began to calm, the heat in his chest dissipating and being replaced by a much more comfortable emptiness as Sophie welcomed herself into his lap.

“I wish I could sing _your_ nightmares away…” was all she said sleepily as she rested her head in the hollow or his cowl and wrapped a single arm around his neck.

Davix didn’t respond, he didn’t need to even as he wrapped his arms around her and pulled her deeper into the embrace. Her warmth soaked into him and once again he was saturated in this rapture of her he couldn’t escape, didn’t want to escape.

He’d hold her there forever if he could.

He already knew the meaning behind the nightmare, Davix knew his mind well enough to know it was warding him against failings he had committed before. He feared, deep down, that Sophie would hurt him like Trina did. A fear he was certain was unfounded and could quite happily ignore in his waking hours. There was nothing he had that could possibly hold any importance to her. She knew too little about him to care.

He wasn’t even human, though there were times recently when he looked at her - when he slipped that little bit deeper - that he wished he were. How much easier would things be if he was the same as she. But Sophie was not Trina, she did not look at him the same way she ever had. Her affection was real, the first of its kind and he would bathe in her attention for as long as he could.

He could feel himself drifting again, eyes heavy and head clouded even as Sophie snuggled deeper still and he purred deeply in response. He didn’t need her to sing. Her being there would always be enough, even if it didn’t last forever.

But even now Davix refused to believe that this would be the end for them.

* * *

The drive had seemed to end much quicker that all of the others, but the night had descended upon them so suddenly and Davix had long decided that he’d had enough for one evening and pulled the tank back into the thicket of trees. For how long they would be able to get away with this sort of cover, Sophie didn’t know, but who was she to question the fact that they could for now.

Even she was certain that Lycan’s View was a clearing of sorts, an outcropping of rock and cliff faces that she wasn’t even sure the Mako could even get to. There was little doubt they would have to abandon the tank sooner or later before they even reached Davix’s extraction point.

But the ride had ended, none-the-less and now they both sat together in a somewhat comfortable silence. The company of one another seemingly enough to sate their mental appetites for the moment.

It was romantic in a sense and she somewhat doubted Davix’s intentions, but the offer of star gazing would not be passed up, least of all by her. Food had been consumed and the fire left to blaze away contentedly in the near distance while Sophie and Davix sat side by side on the roof of the Mako and gazed at the night sky. Of course, he had helped her up; she wasn’t part mountain goat like he was.

The night was stunning, for want of a better way to describe it. Sophie was no astronomer, but there was so much beauty swept above them – like gems spilled onto a sheet of black satin - that it again occurred to her just how small they really were within this vast expanse of galaxy. It brought her some comfort, as little as it was, as she turned and shifted her gaze to the man next to her, that for at least her lifetime Davix had been looking up at this very same sky as they were doing now.

Sophie allowed herself this moment of simple pleasure; just sitting there, looking at him, this object of her affection who had grown on her like a weed in little over five days or so – it was hard to keep track of time and she had long surmised that referring to her omni-tool for anything other than the pre-downloaded area map was quite dangerous lest they wish to be tracked in some way. He was so handsome, he truly was, but only god seemed to know how she would be able to convince him of this fact.

Her thoughts flitted briefly, once more, to the life she’d left behind at Mt.Myka. Were those the same doubts swimming around in her mind or were they new? The regret that she had chosen the wrong path was still so strong, enough to make her guts churn whenever she found herself ghosting over the events that happened there. But again, her focus returned to Davix and that just him and him alone was enough to confirm that her decision back then had been the right one. That _this_ was the right thing to do. That his life, his _safety_ could very well be at least one very small key to peace.

_That maybe one day she could make him happy._

He looked at her then, with that knowing flare of his mandibles that made the rings hooped through each one clink together like chimes in the wind.  And she was back there - in her minds eye - back in his arms embroiled in a kiss so deep, so passionate that her mind simply couldn’t comprehend another being could feel so strongly for her as she did for him.

_“We can’t pursue this…”_

_“… I know.”_

It was the shift of Davix’s facial plates – a change of expression she didn’t quite recognise but assumed was concern – that gave her the hint that she had been looking for too long and she quickly pulled her focus from him and back to the stars.

“So, where’s Palaven then?” She asked with a sigh and the mild hope the conversation would help clear her head, if only a little. Davix complied almost instantly, his head turning back to the stars as he lifted a hand and pointed to the brightest gathering of heavenly bodies.

“You see that cluster of stars there?” he spoke so softly, so softly that his voice seemed to touch her. And he touched her so deeply. So very deeply that her heart would skip a beat each time he uttered her name.  

“Yeah, I see it,” she replied simply with a nod.

“That is what we call the Apien Crest. That’s where Palaven is.”

Sophie looked at him then, noting the slight crease to Davix’s eyes as he allowed their gazes to meet. He was grinning at her.

“Really?” she asked not quite able to keep the doubt out of her tone.

“I don’t know. Could be,” he chuckled as he lay back against the hinge of the tanks canon, hooked both arms around his neck and crossed his legs. “I don’t fly the ships, I just build and maintain them.”

She smiled at him, amused that someone in his predicament, someone who was literally starving to death not so long ago, who was totally lost on this alien planet with nothing but the rag around his waist could be so cheerful when all she felt was self-pity.

“Sophie?” His voice again, so deep, flanged and oh so gorgeous, pulled her out of her wallowing. He was sitting up again and he was looking at her with that concerned arch to his brow that he had before.

“What are you thinking?”

He wanted her to talk to him, not for the first time. If there was one thing she had noticed about this man it was his love of chatter. Davix enjoyed small talk about nothing in particular, and when silence did descend on them - as it inevitably did - he would often become fidgety and agitated. And it was becoming quite rare that she would deny him his need to share in such a way. It was just one of many things that made him so irrefutably attractive.

But she didn’t know what to say this time. He knew something was bothering her, perhaps he even knew what that _something_ was – there was every chance that he did. But as she sat there now, staring into the abyss, Sophie struggled to find the words she needed to convey what was on her mind.

Eventually, however, she simply opened her mouth and allowed herself to speak.

“I just…” but even then, she hesitated. For so long she had lived a life of caution, of having to be careful what she could and couldn’t say, how to say it and when to speak. How hard was it to learn that Davix was _not_ James?

The courage came to her then. “… I don’t want this to end.” She couldn’t look at him when she said it, but Davix’s silence in response to her statement forced her to shift her eyes his way. He wasn’t looking her – instead his focus lay at her feet - though his expression hadn’t changed, the concern still gripping his heavy brow. It wasn’t until she spoke again that his gaze flitted back to hers.

“Is that bad…?” She needed clarification, to know that she wasn’t the only one sitting there aching, _hurting_.

Davix simply sat there, seemingly deep in thought, both mandibles twitching oddly on either side of his face until he eventually leaned towards her, lifted a single hand and touched her cheek so gently with the tips of his long fingers. Sophie leaned into his touch this time, relishing in the heat of his hand on her face, bathing in the notion that this man, this alien, wanted the same things she did.

_And he was not the one for her._

“No,” he replied, his voice almost a whisper, almost but not quite with his sub-vocals harmonising his answer so sweetly, deep in his thick chest. “No, it’s not bad.”

He’d even given her the answer that she wanted, and not because he thought she wanted to hear it. Davix wasn’t humouring her, and Sophie doubted very much that he had it about him to do even that. But still it wasn’t quite enough. Knowing that whatever was brewing between them as they gazed at one another in the starlight was moot only caused her chest to ache and force herself to look away, his hand falling from her face.

“What are we doing?” she whispered, refusing to let her emotions get the better of her by snuffing hard though her nose with a frown. “Is this a game?”

Even Sophie wasn’t sure where that question had come from, she hadn’t registered she’d even said it until the words had already left her lips. But she didn’t retract it, instead she merely shifted her blue gaze back to Davix as he chuckled throatily with a wide flaring of both mandibles and a slow shake of his head.

“The last time I heard, games were meant to be fun.” Was all he said initially, turning away from her to look back at the night sky with crossed arms over bent knees. He sat there for a moment, seemingly pondering, what, she didn’t know at first, until he lowered his sights back to the metal of the tanks roof.

“I don’t treat people I care about like toys, Sophie.” His voice was soft, though his harmonics buzzed passionately in his chest even when he’d long stopped talking he still twittered and chimed to her in the sweetest way, yet it took him a moment or two to lift his head and look at her again.

“We’ve made things complicated though, haven’t we?” she didn’t expect an answer but Davix graced her with one anyway.

“This only has to be as complicated as we want it to be, and I guess…”

She looked at him again then, sensing his hesitation to continue but also hearing the humour hanging in his tone. The lilt to his mandibles and the slight tilt to his head suggested a shrug.

“… we both enjoy the drama, right?”

His eyes softened at that moment, mandibles spread wide in that unmistakeable turian-eske grin that he did so well and she laughed, softly, but it was the first time in what felt like a while that she truly felt like laughing.

“You’re not wrong there, Davix. You’re not wrong,” she chuckled amusedly while turning her sights back to the heavens, to that star spackled sky they both seemed to love so much, that reinforced their plight was insignificant in the grand scheme that was space.

“We could just run away, if you want,” Davix said somewhat dismissively as if the notion wasn’t at all ludicrous and Sophie couldn’t help the chuckle she blew through her nose.

“Where are we going?” she asked in a similar tone, knowing they were now, indeed, playing a game though this one seemed to be of the fun variety. Still Sophie had to admit, the idea of simply running away with him was a very attractive one, all things considered.

“I don’t know,” he started, leaning forward again against his bent knees. “We’ll get to the extraction point first, knock out the pilot and steal his ship. We’ll figure the location part out later.” He nodded knowingly before turning his grin to Sophie who simply grinned back.

“Alright, I’m game,” she agreed with a soft giggle. “But if you’ve knocked out the pilot who’s going to fly the ship?”

“Hey, I’m sure with your scientific knowledge and my engineering knowhow we could work something out.”

“I cut up corpses for a living, Davix. I don’t know squat about star maps and navigation. We’re going to get lost. Or crash land somewhere and get stranded.”

“Pretty sure we’re already stranded… can’t be much worse than this, right?”

“Yeah… right,” Sophie responded wistfully then, turning her attention back to the sky. The fantasy was nice, but that was all it was - a fantasy - and even though Davix had tried to inject a little bit of humour into their current bleak existence all it did was reinforce the fact that their predicament was a hopeless one.

It was then that she felt him again. He’d moved closer, unprompted, and he brushed the knuckles of a single three fingered hand against her cheek which in turn caused her to turn towards him as he pulled her closer and rested his brow against hers.

“I wish I could keep you…”

His harmonics had died, leaving only his main voice and the painful sorrow it carried in their wake and Sophie could only respond in kind as she allowed her eyes to flutter shut. She lifted her head, encouraging Davix to shift his downwards and rub his hard nose against hers. She knew she’d heard those words before – those exact words – but until now she’d believed she’d dreamt them. The sudden realisation that she hadn’t was overwhelming to the point that she failed to stifle the whimper in her throat as the turian nuzzling her cupped her face in both hands.

“I wish that too,” she answered eventually, her voice soft and solemn as the weight in her chest only became much heavier.

How long would it be until her heart stopped hurting?

* * *

It seemed she had blinked and missed the entire day again, as the night set in and Davix had seemingly lost track of time as the darkness descended while the drive continued. With the missing door panel on the drivers side the air was blowing a frosty chill into the vehicle which had Sophie dragging the old scratchy blanket around her a little tighter. The only thing that was really on her mind at that moment was how she was planning to fill her belly that evening. It seemed that Davix was quite a skilled hunter, and even if the game he brought back each evening was quite small, it was substantial. But it went without saying that Sophie craved some really salty fries and the biggest, greasiest new york burger money could buy. Her stomach growled at the prospect of fictional food and she ran the flat of her hand against it as if this would calm the beast within and she did so with an irritated sigh.

The pair of them hadn’t spoken much over the course of the day, and idle thoughts flittered over home, and what awaited her there. It wouldn’t be all picket fences and sunny days would it? She was facing jail time for what she was doing and yet that thought wasn’t enough for her to abandon the journey. That thought alone had not been enough to stop her in the first place. She’d gone against her superiors and freed a captive – a prisoner of war. An act of treason. It was any wonder the Alliance weren’t hunting her down.

Hell, dad wouldn’t even be there to greet her when – or even if – she managed to get away from this god forsaken rock. Thoughts of him swept into her mind, a mixtape of memories that would only serve to remind her of what she’d lost. And she’d lost everything – her career, the one thing in her life she had worked so damn hard for, was in ruins, and there was little doubt that her humanity lay in tatters in the eyes of her peers.

She had nothing now.

_Nothing._

Only a blazing trail of destruction and deceit against the Alliance Military; against Project Pegasus and its unfounded goals. It was the first time she was truly starting to realise the gravity of the situation she was putting herself in. What was going to be there to meet her when all of this was over?

She couldn’t run away with Davix like they had jokingly suggested the night before. They’d be found eventually and was a life on the run truly worth the heartache of finally getting caught? The idea was exciting, it truly was, but it was unrealistic and the sooner she put it to bed the better it would be for everyone. The fact that she was thinking about it at all was surprising enough.

It was the moment that the tank drifted to a slow stop that had Sophie drag herself from her musings and look over to Davix who was staring quite intensely – well, as intensely as a turian could – out of the main viewing port. He was gripping the steering column so tightly she could hear the plastic coating creaking beneath his fingers.

Before she could ask what the matter was Davix had already shifted his stare to her with nothing but the movement of his eyes, and was uttering the word “Humans…” under his breath.

She looked out of the viewing port then to see the white ghostly forms glowing against the main beams. Usually they would drive without the beams on but had since decided it was now safe to do so. How wrong they’d been.

Three of them – indeed human - stood there beckoning to the tank. The nearest settlement to their current location was Hayfair Deep, according to Sophie’s map – a small mining community on the edge of the warzone – but that was a good thirty or forty kilometres away. What were these people doing way out here? It was the harsh snuff Davix forced through his nose that dragged her attention back to him. He was getting agitated and she had come to a decision; sending Davix out to deal with them was not the best move.

“Stay here,” she told him quietly, confident that the operatives out there in the field couldn’t see into the vehicle from their vantage point – almost certainly blinded by the beams. All they could see was a human vessel. “I’ll go out to them and see what they want.”

He grabbed her then, harshly, by the arm as she motioned to open the door on her side. He didn’t say anything, but Sophie could tell that he was scared, and rightly so. The last humans he’d come into contact with – aside from her – had brutally tortured and killed his entire squad. Had threatened to kill him too but it was with her own hand over his that Davix’s grip loosened and his gaze dropped away into the space between them.

“It’ll be alright, I got this. It’s probably nothing,” She whispered though not before Davix silently reached for the footwell storage compartment, opened it and pulled out her father’s pistol. He brandished it as though showing her how to use it before offering it to her.

 _You **will** use this if they try anything,_ was exactly what he was saying to her.

Sophie looked at the gun only for a moment before lifting her eyes to him and nodding only once.

There was something empowering about the way he’d treated her then; Davix feared for her safety, but he held little doubt that she was strong enough to maintain that safety on her own. She was not a meek little girl with Davix, she was as strong as any turian foot soldier. They were equal in his eyes. Despite the fear in her chest it felt good to be respected in such a way, and she grabbed the pistol, sheathing it in the back of her pants before leaving the tank and stepping out into the cool night.

The wind was rising it seemed, a storm brewed angrily on the horizon. The last dregs of Shanxi’s sun illuminated the dark clouds billowing in from the east, as Sophie took stock of her surroundings. The main beams illuminated the path to the people still waving at her in the near distance, but these weren’t citizens in need of aid. She could see even from this distance that they carried weapons and their uniform was much too formal, almost clinical for them to be simple mining folk lost in the wilderness.

Something was going on here. Needless to say that ignoring that deep sickening knot that wanted her to simply bolt back to the tank and demand Davix just run these men down was quite difficult. But she trudged on regardless. Sophie needed to keep them away from the tank, away from Davix. The less these people knew about her ward the better. But she knew this was not going to be an easy situation especially so when they started to step her way and called her by name.

“Knighton! Doctor Knighton!”

Sophie picked up the pace, her nerves fraying at the fact that these people knew her name at all; the sick realisation of what was happening hitting her hard like a blow to the gut. They’d been tracked. After all the precautions she’d taken, Davix ensuring he’d encrypted her omni-tool, the tank showing now signs of being followed they’d been tracked and now they’d been caught unawares.

But still she had a skill for talking, came with the territory of being a forensic pathologist. There was every chance she could blag her way out of this situation and she would damn well try if the opportunity presented itself.

As she approached the three men she noted all three of them bore the Pegasus logo though idly she noticed how it looked different somehow, though her attention was not there long enough at that particular moment as leader of the trio began to speak.

“We finally found you, Doctor,” one of them said, a well-presented man, tall and handsome in his own way that almost made him look artificial in the bright lights from the Mako. His voice was not unpleasant though neither was it welcoming. There was no greeting of outstretched hands or even a nod, just a smarmy grin like he’d caught her with cookie crumbs on her face.

“I’m sorry, have we met?” she asked formally but with a sideways glance as she eyed over the uniforms the men wore to spy at the company patch once again. The logo on the coats were so very familiar much like the one embroidered into her own now filthy coat. While hers was a simple black oblong hexagon that represented Project Pegasus theirs had additional orange bands on either side of the same shape.

“Are you with Pegasus?” she asked before any of them had the chance to answer her initial query. They looked at one another then and they laughed in unison, a strange, sinister noise that only flared the anxiety already bubbling in her guts.

“Pegasus? No, I’m afraid we’re no flying pony anymore, _Doctor_. And haven’t been for some time.” The head of the trio answered, his eyes now a shade darker as he took a single step towards her which, of course, enticed Sophie to take a single step away from them.

“You may find that we’ve grown a few… extra heads, so to speak. And you have something that belongs to us. We’ve been sent to retrieve it. Hand it over and no one has to get hurt.”

Sophie didn’t like the humour that hung in the man’s voice, and she liked his deadpan grin even less, needless to say that he had delivered a riddle that she didn’t quite understand other than Project Pegasus was no more.

“Retrieve what, the tank?” Sophie asked hearing the panic creeping into her voice and the laughter from the men again did little to quell her nerves as they looked at one another once more as if to ascertain that this woman stood before them was as stupid as she sounded.

“Have you heard this?” The head of the troop asked the others who seemed to just stand there and laugh along, like robots. “The little lady thinks we want her shit can of a tank.”

The laughter died quite suddenly, and the smile dissolved from the mans face as he continued to explain himself with much less humour than before.

“Hand over the Ghost, Doctor Knighton. I will not ask again.”

“ _Davix_ …” his name escaped her in little more than a breath before she’d had the chance to stop it. Of course they wanted him, for what purpose was unknown but even back at Mt.Myka he was the only one out of the team of captives who had been kept separate and caged away from the others. But she could feel the heat in her chest rising, a boiling rage at the thought that these men wanted him for their own gain, to open him up, to perform vile experiments on him, on Davix, the man she _loved_.

“Oh!” the man said almost gleefully as he took another step towards her. “It has a name! Well, we’ll just take this _Davix_ off your hands and be on our way.”

The anger seethed within her as she unsheathed her weapon and pointed it at the man addressing her. He seemed unfazed though the other two of the trio – presumably his bodyguards - were armed with rifles of their own it seemed they were quite shocked at Sophie’s reaction given their delay in aiming their own weapons at their attacker. But she was undeterred, her pistol aimed between the mans eyes as he stared down the barrel.

“You will _not_!” was all she spat at him before she pulled the trigger.

* * *

Davix had managed to retreat into the back of the tank before Sophie had even approached the humans in the distance. To say that he was terrified was an understatement if ever there was one, the fear clattered in his bones. But he had to keep his wits about him if he was going to execute his plan.

He knew the humans in the distance were after him, of course they were; he was an escapee from one of their testing facilities, a project waiting to be disembowelled like Chrysa in her torture chamber. Or perhaps he was still a source of information he simply didn’t have.

The thought chilled Davix to the core. How long had it been since his mind had even ghosted over his old team? It seemed like a lifetime ago that he’d watched the filth being forced down Ruban’s throat, since he’d found his last surviving squad mate dying in her bed of gore and blood. The memory was nauseating but he had to focus, and it was with a deep breath that he regained that focus and slipped into the night from the rear of the tank and vanished into the trees with a single phaeston in hand. Sophie’s phaeston.

There were two human soldiers that Sophie had missed attempting to intercept him from the tank but of course they’d arrived too late to find the vehicle abandoned and only his oil stained bedsheet occupying the drivers side. He’d discarded the rag almost as soon as Sophie had left the vessel. He was dark in colour, the perfect shade to be mistaken for a shadow, the sheet would simply give him away.

What the humans sometimes forgot was that a turian was not only a soldier but also an apex predator. Naturally skilled and equipped for the hunt, instinctually in tune with their surroundings that picking off slower prey – humans – was quite easy with the right amount of knowledge.

However, even Davix knew it was unwise to underestimate a human, let alone a whole squad of them. He had been a victim of his own ignorance once, he was not about to let that happen again. He left the two humans sent to seize him inspecting the tank and scratching their heads as he silently made his way through the trees to get closer to the others, closer to Sophie, though she seemed to be keeping a respectable distance from the trio they had initially seen – males by the build of them – the one at the front was creeping closer.

Davix was downwind, a good thing for him if he wanted to hear what was going on from their general direction but better for them not hearing him coming though he was by no means close enough to the action to hear what was being said. All he could fathom – mostly by how Sophie was backing away – was that they were not friendly.

Of course they weren’t.

Picking his way through the outskirts of the dense wood he assumed a position where he was able to lie against a felled trunk not too far away from the humans and to Sophie’s rear-left. He lifted his gun before carefully arming it, hearing the distinctive high-pitched whine as the rifle powered up and he took aim, the one nearest to him behind the human addressing Sophie was his primary target for now. The strategy being that his death would be enough of a distraction for the other two – and perhaps the two currently gutting the tank – that he could take them down quickly in the confusion and he and Sophie could be on their way.

But his plan was not about to reach fruition, even as Sophie pulled out her pistol to the man in front of her and the other two took aim there was a shot from elsewhere in the field. A shot fired from what sounded distinctively like a krysae rifle that literally blew the first human’s head from his shoulders in a spray of blood, bone and gore as his body was flung to the side with the force. Sophie’s pistol fired only moments after the initial blast.

The other two staggered back only briefly before they started to scream and fire blindly in the general direction the blast originated from as Sophie, seemingly out of her depth and splattered with bits of brain and bone merely stood and stared at the headless body on the ground.

There was something else at work here and Davix had to get to her before she was caught in the cross fire.

Davix bolted out of the wood calling her name though it seemed she couldn’t hear him, just as one of the men sent to inspect the tank came sprinting from behind him. The man was fast but, naturally, Davix was faster as he spun on his attacker and went to swipe him with the butt of his rifle. But the sniper was even quicker as another round from the near distance punctured the human male’s cheek which then tore off the side of his face, his eye exploding in a mess of blood white gunge within the carnage. The man screamed like nothing Davix had ever heard before and he couldn’t look away – try as he might - as the small human writhed in agony before the damage became too much and he succumbed to his injury.

He had to collect himself as he heard more shots being fired from that same distinctive rifle in the near distance, Sophie was still there, simply gawking at the bloodbath around her, a good thing but it seemed that all the people sent out to greet them had been picked off. There was another Ghost here, maybe more than one, but it wasn’t until he saw the tell-tale glint in the distance that caused the panic of what was happening – and what was about to happen - to froth into his gullet.

It was the glint of the rifle hidden in the trees, the reflection of Shanxi’s moons bouncing off the metal giving away its location and even from this vantage point, even from this sheer distance he could see the gun was turian in design – the krysae from before - and its barrel was aimed at Sophie who was simply standing there lost amongst the chaos.

There was no time to think, no time to contemplate follow up consequences of what he was about to do and he sprinted towards her on all fours, scrabbling against the grass as he kicked up the dirt beneath him in clumps just to get to her, just to push her out of the way, out of the sights of that rifle he could see in the distance.

He had to get to her.

He had to run faster

His legs were too slow

He was too slow.

She was going to die

Because of him

All because of him

He couldn’t let that happen.

But just at that moment, when his body collided hard with hers, flinging her across the battle field in a flailing heap of brown hair and limbs, Davix saw the flash as the gun was fired and the projectile hurtled towards him.

He wasn’t fast enough.

He was too slow.

And it was white hot as it seared his skin and blew his throat apart.

His entire world now was nothing but agony.

* * *

She hit the floor hard, with enough force the impact jarred her shoulder the pain making her grunt as it shot through her back. Before she heard the shot and initially she thought Davix had tripped and fallen into her in the panic. Sophie wasn’t even sure what had happened, remembering very little other than she was certain her pistol hadn’t enough firepower to blow a mans head to shreds.

And even as she glanced up from her position on the moist ground all she could see was the curve of Davix’s back. His gait was off – strange - and the field was eerily silent. It seemed the sniper in the distance had picked off the humans who had originally come out to greet them. Though Sophie didn’t have the time nor the mindset to appreciate whether or not this was a good thing. The only positive she could fathom right now was the original threat had been dealt with, one way or another and her ward was still safely within her reach.

Everything had happened so suddenly it was difficult to comprehend what had happened at all.

But there was something not quite right about what was happening here, why had Davix run into her like that? Had he really fallen? And what was he doing just standing there? Had he seen something she hadn’t?

Eventually Davix turned towards her – slowly, deliberately like a machine not a living thing – and initially she struggled to grasp what it was she was actually looking at, as though her eyes were seeing it, but her mind simply wasn’t. Davix seemed darker somehow – almost an impossibility given the shade of his charcoal carapace -, the skin on his throat glistening oddly in the moonlight.

Blood.

It was blood she could see.

 _His_ blood.

And it wasn’t until Davix spluttered, the gore gushing out of his mouth and running thickly from the wound in his throat over his chest that the horror of what she was seeing finally registered.

Davix been caught in the conflict, he’d been shot, and she realised the moment he dropped heavily to his knees in front of her that if she sat there idly and did nothing he was going to die.

All she could do at that moment was sit there while the world crumbled around her.

She was screaming his name but she couldn’t hear her voice, she knew this even as she forced herself to move from her crouch, her body – not feeling like her own - betraying her and tangling in her own feet as she scrambled towards him, fingernails scraping in the mud to get to him, to reach him.

She was screaming his name.

And she couldn’t hear her voice.

The only sound within this horror was the beating of her own heart pulsing violently in her chest.

The moment she reached him, Davix was already on his back and reality came rushing back to her like a whirlwind as she tore her filthy medical coat from her back. It got caught on an elbow in her blind panic to free it and she heard the thing rip as she tore it from her with an extraordinary, white hot rage. A rage that didn’t last as her focus returned to the man bleeding on the ground.

“It’s okay, Davix, it’s okay, it’s okay, you’re gonna be okay, keep breathing, keep breathing, _keep breathing.”_ She was gasping with each word, her voice hoarse as she plunged a single hand into the pool of blood filling the hollow of Davix’s cowl. The panic was consuming her, and she could feel his entire body quaking deep in his bones as he struggled to breathe through the carnage that was now his throat.

He was going into shock. Eyes blinking out of sync, rolling into the back of his head as he battled both for air and consciousness. His maw folding and unfurling as he lay there struggling to breathe.

He couldn’t breathe.

“It’s okay.”

He was choking.

“Just keep breathing.”

He was going to die.

“You’re gonna be okay.”

She had to find the wound, she had to find it to stem it, she had to find it to buy more time, to let her think.

“You’re gonna be okay.”

She needed to think.

“Keep breathing.”

She just needed to _think_.

“Keep breathing.”

He was going to die in her hands if she didn’t find the wound soon.

“Breathe for me.”

_my one, my love._

It was then with a single exhale, within that split second of calm upon remembering her songbird’s sweet music, the way his feathers swept so softly against her skin that time stilled once again, within that unclouded exhale as she pushed everything out of her mind, everything apart from him - her one, her love, her soul mate, _amicae_ \- that she found it, her fingers slipping into the hole created by the blast and she wasted no more time in swinging her coat into position to stem the flow of blood.

It was at that moment she began to press down on the wound that others came into the clearing. Two of them in fact and neither were human. They were huge, not as big as Davix, granted – he was an anomaly at best, even she knew this - but the armour they bore gave the impression of something much more powerful beneath than the frail paper thin turians she was used to dissecting.  

“Step away!” one squawked – the blue one – through a digital sound box fitted into their helmet. They pointed their gun at her, a simple pistol by the looks of it, alien in design – no doubt turian – while the other – the green one - stepped around the side and mimicked the first with a similar weapon.

Sophie didn’t move, however, not necessarily ignoring Blue’s command but rather facing down the barrel of their weapon in sheer defiance.

“I said step away, human, or I’ll blow your head off! Don’t think I won’t!” There was an anxious agitation to Blue’s voice then, coupled with an odd twitter of nervous sub-harmonics Sophie was quite certain she wasn’t meant to hear. But she heard it regardless – spending all of this time around Davix had started to pay off it seemed when it came to deciphering turian subvocals.

But she would not leave him, she would _not_.

“No! I will _not_ step away!”

Sophie didn’t realise she was actually screaming until both armoured turians visibly flinched and one of them, the green one lowered their gun. It was obvious the pair were not used to humans who challenged them, but there was no way Sophie was about to leave Davix to die where he lay.

She was the only thing at the moment sitting between him and death.

And he was not going to die.

Not today.

 _Not today_.

“I am unarmed, so kill me if you want, I don’t _fucking_ care. But your comrade has fallen and is lying here dying at your feet!!”

The two aliens stood before her glanced at each other momentarily seemingly confused by the situation. Unusual for a species as strictly militant and driven by order as the turians. It was more than evident that Sophie’s anger was not what they were expecting, and the pair jolted again when she continued.

“You can help him right now or concern yourself with me. Which one is it going to be?!”

There was yet another moment of hesitation from the pair of them and Sophie was certain she could hear them prattling to one another through harmonics. The gestures they performed frantically with their hands at one another suggested heavily that they were communicating, though both of them moved hastily to either side of her and Davix and stood to attention as a monstrous voice boomed from behind them.

“You pair of princhavs! What are you waiting for?”

Another turian, a behemoth of a thing it was, came stomping over to them and stood between the two much smaller aliens stood before her. Helmet beneath a single thick arm, a long crest of horns protruding at the back of his head, it was clear to see this one was male, and he was _enormous_. The armour he wore – dense and so black he was almost invisible against the trees - only served to make him look much bigger than perhaps he really was but it was so evident to see by the way the hard armoured plates protruded out of each shoulder that this turian was similar in build to Davix.

Though not quite as regal, definitely not handsome and considerably more terrifying to look at. He looked like something out of a story book. A monster made of rocks.

The shell on his face was an iridescent green decorated with shocking white markings that seemed to glow against the sheer black of his armour and he shone in the moonlight like an emerald, but his eyes were red, and they seethed beneath his heavy brow the moment he laid eyes on her.

Sophie gazed back, mesmerised by the sheer size of this new dragon-eske beast as she held her coat to Davix’s throat, feeling his laboured breaths beneath her hands.

There was a moment of them simply staring at each other, a moment that seemed to last several lifetimes until the huge green turian began to speak in his deep gravelly voice.

“You look at me like you’ve seen a ghost,” he started before he continued with a vicious snarl “You’re not wrong.”

He then turned towards the blue armoured one next to him and began to bark at it and point into the distance.

“Don’t just stand there, Presh, get the tank, now!”

Blue, now known as Presh, simply nodded and sped off into the darkness as the huge male turned to the other one.

“You! Medi-gel, c’mon, Tang! Do I need to hold your fucking hand now?!”

Again, there was no verbal answer from the smaller turian, just a simple curt nod before they ran off in the same direction as the other one. The brute turned to Sophie then and pointed at her with a heavily armoured hand. Though it wasn’t until then that she even noticed that his weapon - something resembling a sniper rifle - was now mounted on his back. She relaxed, only a little at the realisation that this alien was not on the offensive, at least not right now.

Though her calm didn’t last as he opened his mouth and his voice, deep and gravelly though flanged much like Davix’s boomed out of his throat.

 “You!” His voice was thunderous, unlike anything Sophie had ever heard before and the noise startled her so much she felt her skin tighten and had to force herself not to recoil.

“You keep that wound stemmed and keep him awake. I will not have him slip from us or on your head be it!”

His demand was heeded with a firm nod from Sophie as she applied a little more pressure to the wound in Davix’s throat and habitually placed a hand on the side of his face. His breathing was still laboured – he groaned with each exhale partnered with each agonising inhale - the blood gurgling in his throat and puffling out of his mouth in thick slimy bubbles, but he was alive and by the confidence this other, enormous turian oozed it seemed that he was in the best possible hands.

“Yes, sir,” she responded.

“And human…”

The tone of his voice, and that sub-vocal that lay beneath, had turned a shade darker than before which in turn caused Sophie to slowly lift her gaze and connect with the seething crimson of this monstrous alien eyes. He was crouched before her now, and he glared into her soul with that demonic red gaze. It dawned on her suddenly that this turian was a solid two feet bigger than Davix and was much thicker set to boot. If he wanted to simply crush her there was nothing stopping him.

“… it would bode you well to think long and hard about why I didn’t take a second shot.”

Her blood went cold as she watched the larger alien get to his feet and walk away to meet with his team mates. It was then that she realised exactly what had happened within the chaos.

This was no accident.

Davix, lying here struggling to breathe through his own blood.

He hadn’t tripped and fallen like she initially thought. He hadn’t been in the wrong place at the wrong time.

He had pushed her out of the way and taken a bullet…

… that was meant for her.

As the pieces came together in her head, and she started to make sense of it all she noticed him looking at her and it was when she turned her gaze to him that he lifted a shaky hand and weakly brushed his knuckles against her cheek.

“You’re so stupid…” she was whispering as her vision blurred behind the tears, and she let them come, rolling down her cheeks in fat rivers as Davix feebly attempted to sweep them away. She leaned into his touch regardless and she watched him fight for air beneath her hands that held her coat to his wound now stained with his blood.

Blood that he was spilling for her.

“You’re so stupid.”

She heard him groan, a sound loud enough for her to calm herself if only a little and though the sound did not seem painful he winced and swallowed as though trying to speak. And he did, a little strained, a little breathless and a little broken but he spoke regardless as he touched her cheek weakly and yet so tenderly, allowing his thumb to softly graze her skin.

_“Eo aplis ov erravus eo inver, por mea corda.”_

For whatever reason, Sophie’s decoder couldn’t pick up the words he was speaking – maybe it was broken in the crossfire – but he spoke so beautifully that she was certain all time around them had simply stopped.

She didn’t have time for any thoughts to manifest, or to begin even piecing together what Davix was trying to tell her, when the party of heavily armoured turians returned. The huge green golum of a man was the one giving out the orders in the deep gravelly voice of his.

“You two, get on his hands.”

Somehow, Sophie was pulled away from him - reluctantly, by the bigger of the trio as the two smaller ones pulled Davix’s arms outwards and literally sat on his hands while she watched on a little dismayed that she was no longer able to sit between him and whatever fate was awaiting him now the team had returned. It was the huge male who handed her the coat she’d used to stem the wound and those red eyes he’d looked at her with before had softened somehow as she stared back pleadingly and gripping her jacket to her chest.

“Please…” she started though not quite certain what she was asking for, but it was then that she felt the strong grip of his armoured hand on her shoulder and a knowing flare of his mandibles before he spoke.

“Do yourself a favour, human…” his words were terse, commanding but not unkind “… and cover your ears.”

* * *

Their journey in the Mako had finally come to an end.

The human-built tank that had been hers and Davix’s sanctuary now abandoned in the field and left to rot. This new journey was much smoother, but now she was deep in the clutches of the enemy – a captive of the turian fleet. This was no longer a rescue mission, that part was over, her usefulness was at an end. Davix had been saved by his own kind and for whatever reason the crew who found him had decided to bring her along for the ride, rather than kill her, which had obviously been the original plan.

Sophie wasn’t sure how long they’d been travelling in this strange alien vehicle. It was certainly a much steadier ride than the Mako, the thing didn’t even have wheels, but hovered above the ground somehow. She hadn’t had enough brain power about her to ask, her concern laying upon the sleeping face of the man who’d saved her life almost at total cost to his own.

The monstrous green turian had been right to suggest that she cover her ears before he’d straddled Davix’s chest, informed him that his treatment was going to be painful and went on to administer this strange gel that healed wounds in mere hours.

She’d never heard a shriek like it; like a train screeching to a halt as Davix cried out in agony while he writhed and bucked beneath the weight of the trio who’d found them as the biggest one pushed the gel deep into Davix’s wound. Even with shielded ears his screams were so painful, and all Sophie could do at the time was bury her head in her knees and try not to cry at the sound of him.

The events leading up to them getting in the tank were a mere blur, but she was quite aware the green, red-eyed turian had been staring at her ever since the new journey to wherever they were going had begun.

Sophie tried her best to ignore him, concerning herself only with Davix who slept on a gurney-like table in the centre of the tank dwelling. The dressing on his throat hid the wound there but it seemed the darkening of it as the blood soaked in had long since stopped.

That medi-gel stuff was a medical marvel, perhaps when her head was in a better place she should ask about it. Though what was to say that these new turians weren’t leading her to her death? Somehow, she doubted very much that Davix would want to be a part of that plan.

“What are you?” came the deep gravelly voice from the opposite side of the tank dwelling. The other two – females by the way their heads lacked the crest of horns typically found in the males – were in the front of the tank chattering inanely to themselves. It was more than clear that the male of the troupe was addressing her. She didn’t answer, and rewarded him only with a fleeting, spiteful glance in his general direction before turning her attention back to Davix.

A big mistake if ever she’d made one.

He rose from his seat, towered over her and slammed one of his enormous hands against the metal of the tank wall next to her head. Naturally Sophie flinched, even whimpered a little in the process, but she didn’t give the golem of an alien the satisfaction of cowering away. Not that she was certain this was the reaction he actually wanted.

“I do not speak to be ignored, human!” he hissed at her through a clenched jaw as he looked down at her like a predator about to devour its prey. Davix had been frightening during their initial rocky days together, but this one was terrifying. Still, Sophie didn’t allow him the pleasure of knowing just how much he frightened her. She would not cower into a corner like some scared little mouse. She would not.

“I will ask again,” he spoke slower this time as though he didn’t quite believe Sophie was capable of understanding him. “What _are_ you?”

Sophie sat there beneath this behemoth while she contemplated her answer, not entirely certain what the question really meant or what he wanted to hear though she had an inkling that he was asking about her relationship with Davix.

He wanted to know what she was to _him_.

And what exactly was she to Davix?

They weren’t enemies, she was not his prisoner as far as she could tell. Not once had he restricted her, not once. Friends would be a closer proximation of their relationship despite it being more symbiotic as opposed to natural friendship, but it was more than that.

It was.

She couldn’t tell this turian that, she couldn’t tell him that they were falling for one another, she just couldn’t. They may not be enemies, but they weren’t exactly lovers either. They were caught in some sticky limbo between the two.  

But she strung some words together which would hopefully stop anymore questions, a reply that wasn’t a lie, though not quite a whole truth.

“The tour guide,” she answered simply, careful not to allow her fear to creep into her voice. He laughed, an ugly, throaty guffaw she felt against her face just before he pushed himself away from the wall and allowed his weight to drop back into his seat which caused the tank to sway.

“Tour guide? Girls, did you hear that?! She’s the _tour guide_!” he called into the front of the tank. Neither of the females cared to turn to face him but both of them answered in a strange unison.

“Oh, we heard, we heard,” they shouted back with strange girlish giggles not befitting a turian at all.

It seemed that Sophie was the only one who didn’t get the joke and the laughter quickly died and the huge alien sat before her spread his legs wide and rested both elbows on his knees before he glowered at her with those demonic red eyes.

“Why do you lie so blatantly?” he asked, his voice laced with a sinister nonchalance Sophie wasn’t sure she liked. “Is it to protect yourself? Or to protect him?” he motioned towards Davix still out cold on the table with a lift of his lower mandible still before directing his gaze back to her.

“I don’t understand,” was all she managed meekly before the male laughed at her again. It went without saying that Sophie did not like being the butt of this creature’s amusement.

“Humans are so small and ignorant,” he grunted, seemingly under his breath though Sophie wasn’t sure if she was meant to hear the insult or not.

“There’s something you should probably know about us _little birds_ ,” he started, his eyes low beneath his heavy brow and his voice lower, sinister accompanied by the deep buzzing in his throat and coupled with the unmistakeable shit eating grin displayed with a wide flare of both mandibles.

“We are a predatory species, and we’re _extremely_ territorial. If we claim something we mark it. Wards off others from trying to take it for themselves.”

He leaned forward then, his red eyes flashing in the artificial light of the tank as he motioned his head towards Davix still laying on his table bed.

“And you _stink_ of him.”

She couldn’t quite take in what he was telling her. That Davix had marked her in someway, claimed her as his, supposedly with scent and enough for this other turian to notice. No wonder he was asking questions. The biggest question was, however, what was she even going to tell him? How could she even answer him when she had no idea that this marking thing had even happened?

Why was he even marking her? Or was that question stupider than it sounded in her head?

“So, for the last time…” his voice had dropped again, his subvocals twittering irritably in his chest. He was starting to lose what little patience he had with her. “… what are you?”

“That’s enough, Torque.”

Only a moment went by as she and the other alien pondered where that voice had come from before Davix pushed himself up from the table though not without a pained groan and gingerly touching the bandaged wound on his throat.

She couldn’t help herself as she lunged for him breathing his name in the process and grasping him by his arm. Davix looked at her then and he did so warmly, though only fleetingly as he patted her hand resting on his strong bicep before turning his attention back to the big green turian sat opposite.

The other, much bigger turian – Torque, was it? Strange name - seemed to stiffen at Davix’s rousing and turned his evil red eyes onto him.

“You’ve stuck your cock into some questionable women, but this is a little daring even for you, Fedorian.” Torque’s statement was delivered with an air of cynicism. “You do realise we’re at war with these things?!”

“Yeah. Thanks for reminding me,” There was an agitation to Davix’s tone that even Sophie hadn’t heard before even when he’d lost his temper with her for spouting her vicious insults at him when they had first met. This tone was something strangely new to her.

It was then that Torque attempted to use the same tactic on Davix that he had used on Sophie; to use his sheer bulk as a weapon to intimidate his victim as he slammed both of his enormous three digit hands down on the table and shoved his face into Davix’s, not that the smaller, darker of the two seemed intimidated at all. Davix simply stared back at him, unflinching.

“I don’t think you realise how dangerous this game is that you’re playing! What do you think you’re doing, mating with this, this…” his red eyes shifted to her suddenly, only momentarily but his hateful glare punctured her skin regardless. “… this _thing!_?”

It was Davix’s turn to retaliate, and though he still held onto the wound on his throat he bit back with a fury that was both hideously frightening and strangely arousing as he thrusted his own face back into his attacker’s, their brows almost touching in their aggressive posturing.

“That _thing_ has a name, I suggest you use it! And you should stand down, lieutenant, I am the commanding officer in this vessel and you _will_ address me as such!” He didn’t yell, not once, but the rage in his sub-harmonics and the harsh flutter of his mandibles – an expression of agitation or anger in a turian, Sophie had learned – was enough for the larger of the two to lower his gaze and retreat into his seat.

“My apologies, commander,” was all Torque muttered, his intimidation factor now sitting at zero while he sat and stared into the space between them before Davix cared to explain himself.

“I haven’t mated with anyone and as for this _game_ I’m apparently playing, I’d have thought you of all people would understand!” Davix’s harmonics were still dominating his voice, a sound quite strange to Sophie’s ears as they almost drowned out his main vocals entirely. Though it dawned on her pretty quickly why that was considering the conversation she had with him back in the overhang when he’d sang to her. He was speaking to a fellow turian now and they communicated mostly through harmonics.

Still, she was able to pick out the mood between them and it seemed that Davix’s statement in retaliation to Torque’s accusation had hit a very raw nerve given how the huge green alien’s eyes widened as he looked up sharply at his commanding officer.

“That’s not fair…” Torque’s tone sounded hurt, genuinely betrayed as though Davix had just insulted his entire family. Sophie had a strange feeling that this was exactly what he had done.

“Isn’t it? I think after the risk the quarians inflicted on the galaxy that I’m being _more_ than fair.” There was a venom in which Davix delivered his final statement, so much so that Torque growled deep in his throat before balling both hands into fists, smashing them down hard on the gurney-come-table, before he got to his feet and stomped into the front of the tank with the two females.

Davix let out a sigh, drawn out and discontented, after watching the larger male go.

“He’s a good man… I shouldn’t have said that…” was all he muttered, though Sophie naturally assumed that he was addressing her and she wasn’t all that interested in the two aggressive male’s heated exchange.

“He said that you marked me. What does he mean?” she asked, her voice a little rough and her nerves a little frayed though it seemed to take Davix a long time to turn and look her in the eye, and when he did so his expression was a picture of horror.

“Ah…” was all he said.

“ _Ah_?” Sophie retorted, “Is that it? _Ah_?!” she wasn’t entirely sure why she was getting angry about the notion that Davix had done such a thing. Perhaps it was the idea that he felt he had a right to her, the fact that he somehow believed she was an object that could be owned. She had been there once before, had escaped the patriarchy that had put her there, she wasn’t about to be a part of that again. Though there was something in the back of her head telling her that it was something else that was bothering her.

“Sophie, I-I can explain…” he stuttered with a raised, defensive hand before Sophie interrupted him again.

“Please do, I would very much like to know what makes you think you own me!”

“What? No, it’s not like that…”

“Then what is it? He said you mark things you claim!”

“Yes, but…”

“But what?!”

“Look, you weren’t supposed to find out, alright?!” Davix’s raised voice startled her enough to silence her and allow him to speak.

“I didn’t count on bumping into anyone, least of all that _aitnimis_ ,” he delivered the insult – or at least Sophie assumed it was an insult - towards the other male turian at the front of the vessel with a grimace she realised then that these two seemed to know each other quite well.

“It was a fleeting thing, a-a moment of weakness. It’s dumb and it was selfish… I couldn’t help myself…” Davix hesitated then as Sophie took in what he was saying and the sheer shock of the situation and everything that had happened that had led them to this point began to truly sink in.

 “I didn’t think anyone would find out…” he sighed and looked away, embarrassed, wincing again and touching the dressing on his neck.

It was then that she realised that her anger was misplaced, she didn’t care about the scent marking, it wasn’t even a _thing_ for her, hell the only thing she could smell was herself – god she needed a bath and soon. She wasn’t _angry_ at all, but still reeling from the moment he’d turned towards her in the field drenched in his own blood. She was losing everything around her, she couldn’t lose him too.

She almost had.

For a second time.

“I thought I’d lost you…” she spoke harshly before she’d had the chance to even register the words and he looked at her again with an odd grumble in his throat which caused her to look up at him.

“I thought…” her voice cracked at the realisation of what had happened, and it hit her so hard that she suddenly found it difficult to breath as her vision blurred “… I thought I’d lost you…”

“Sophie…”

She felt his hands on her face, he was so soft, so tender when he touched her that all he did then was reinforce her sobs as he pulled her into one of his embraces, and she flung her arms around him like she hadn’t seen him for a thousand years and cried so vehemently into his neck, relishing in his warmth, just so grateful – not for the first time – that he was alive.

“I thought I’d lost you…” she repeated though through choked gasps it would be any wonder if he could understand her at all.  But he did, and he rocked her body with his own as he weaved a hand through her filthy hair.

“And yet you found me again. _Por mea corda_.”

* * *

No woman had ever cried for him, save for his sister when he was younger. He missed Florette terribly though he didn’t allow his thoughts to linger there for long as he found himself taking a sort of selfish pleasure from the fact that Sophie, this small, pretty thing, was weeping for him.

She’d done that before, the night he’d nearly drowned in the lake. Davix wondered briefly then if he had a taste for death or if he was just extremely unlucky. He surmised that it was the latter.

Either way, Davix held her there in his arms and listened to her sobs, felt her warm tears running over his hide, felt her heat soaking into him as it always did. By the spirits, he loved her, everything about her. But unlike Trina, Sophie wasn’t a weakness. There was something about her that brought out the best in him, that brought out the braver more courageous side to him that he had all but forgotten he had. He’d never felt stronger than he did right now.

And he had proven that to her out in the field just now of how far he’d go for her.

It was astonishing that this feeling had manifested over only a few cycles, but it had nonetheless and the feeling was so strong so powerful that he could feel it consuming him, eating him alive from the inside and yet he sat there still with this tiny human in his arms and he would allow it.

He’d _die_ for her.

Their moment of emotional intimacy didn’t last, however when Torque – as big and brutish as he ever was – came stomping back into the dwelling.

“Anyway, that was two hundred years ago!” He stood over him just as Sophie pulled away and repositioned herself back on the side seats wiping her eyes as she went. It seemed she was fairly intimidated by the big guy towering over them. Not that Davix blamed her in the slightest. Torque was as big as they came but his heart was much bigger once one got behind his hard-shelled exterior.

 “Don’t go blaming Piotrei for what hap…” he paused mid-flow, his red eyes scanning Davix as though he had never really seen him before.

“… and why are you naked?! Where are your fucking _clothes_?!” he was yelling now like a parent would yell at their child for stripping off in public with wide spread arms as though this information was completely new. How had he not noticed out I the field that he wasn’t wearing anything?

Davix couldn’t stifle the amused snort that left his nose before he retorted, “Don’t tell me you don’t like what you see.”

It seemed Torque wasn’t in the mood for jokes when he fluttered his mandibles at him irritably with a low angry growl before turning towards one of the many storage compartment and pulling something out.

“I can’t take you seriously sitting there like that. Put some pants on...” He spat, throwing the black cloth in his hand into Davix’s face before he corrected his manner “… _commander_.”

The pants were a little on the big side, even for Davix but the over tightening of the buckles that sat over his hip spurs were enough to keep them on, for the time being anyway. He may well have to hold them up with a hand if they needed to walk anywhere. But times for fun and games were over it seemed, and the turian vessel they were travelling in was now parked amongst the trees out of view.

Torque had offered Sophie water while Davix explained their situation, which she had refused initially until Davix had coaxed her to take it as a form of acceptance from the much bigger turian and the group was now sitting in the dwelling discussing their plights.

Though what Davix wanted to know was why a set of powerful biotics had been sent to Shanxi so late in the game. It seemed strange the Hierarchy would bring them in to deal with a threat that honed almost no equivalent ability.

“What are the Cabal doing here anyway? Why haven’t you been lifted with the rest of them?” Davix asked genuinely curious as to why Torque and the girls were her on Shanxi and not back on Palaven.

The trio looked at one another then, harmonics quiet as their gazes did most of the talking.

“The war has been over for weeks, Davix. Humanity has won, the Citadel Council is already in the process of establishing the human embassy as we speak.” Torque started, his voice low and his subvocals lower still, a strange way for him to talk it had to be noted. “All this talk of Lycan’s View… it’s all a lie. We’re stranded here. _Oblivus Anirusha_.”

Oblivus Anirusha was quite possibly one of the worst positions to be in. To be abandoned by your own kind, cast offs of the turian hierarchy. It was shameful, and the statement had been delivered by the other turian as such.  Davix looked at Sophie then who gazed back with equal bewilderment hanging in her eyes before he refocused back on the group.

“What do you mean?” was all he asked, but it was Preshura who answered in Torque’s stead. She hadn’t changed much since the last time Davix had seen her, she was still little, yellow and flighty. More so than Tangine – her sister – who sat next her with her fiery red plates concealing a stony cold personality. Anyone who didn’t know the girls well would not know that they were sisters, and very close sisters at that.

“We’re not fighting humans anymore, Davix,” Preshura said, a nervous quiver to her sub-harmonics as she spoke. “We’re still here because General Arterius found something. He calls it the monolith and it has this strange power that can turn people into…”

“ _Titans_ …” Davix finished Preshura’s explanation for her while his mind shifted through the archives of his memory, recalling that disgusting little human back at the human testing facility, what was his name?

Dowell.

_“What I want is quite simple. Just the artefact, **Davix**.”_

Even now, recalling the way in which the human had said his name, like the very sound of it disgusted him made Davix’s stomach churn. He was back there, back in the room, tied again to the tank he and Sophie had rigged and used as their home for the best part of the many cycles that had led to this very moment. The artefact Dowell had wanted was this monolith his friends were trying to explain to him. The memory had seized him, and Davix closed his eyes in a frail attempt to vanquish it but only intensifying the cries of poor Chrysa as she watched her boy suffer at the hands of human kind.

But what good was all of this now?

His team was dead, long dead. As would he be, were it not for the selfless acts of the small human sat next to him in the tank dwelling. The information was too late, and he couldn’t go back in time, he had to leave that memory where it was, stored in the archives of his mind to haunt him another day.

“What about the Kabalim? Where is he in all of this? Why isn’t he ordering an extraction?” Davix asked with a slim hope that the Kabalim of this particular troupe could override the decision to keep them here on this shit hole of a rock. Hi hopes were quickly dashed by the forlorn expression the three of them exchanged with one another.

“We can’t trust Kabalim Laruam. General Arterius … the _monolith_ has corrupted him. We fall under his command or we get turned into one of those… those things. We assumed having you, Commander Fedorian, in our numbers would get us closer to home. Your name holds much power, surely you understand that.” Torque said with a grim sorrow to his voice that Davix had never heard from him before and he swallowed hard at gravity of the situation he was now in. The girls were just sat there on their hands, unmoving save for the soft lilting of their mandibles seemingly ashamed of their plight, ashamed of being known as Oblivus Anirusha.

“How did you even know we were out here?” Sophie interjected much to Davix’s surprise. She had said nothing at all since the conversation had started and even more surprisingly still it was Tangine that answered her.

“Fact is that we didn’t,” she stated flatly, her focus laying still at the front of the tank and not with the team before her. “There was a rumour amongst the humans that a group known as Cerberus were looking for a turian ghost, a big one, and that he was a wanted prisoner of the Alliance military.”

“Cerberus…?” Sophie whispered from behind him, seemingly bewildered by that one word alone though Tangine continued regardless.

“We knew they weren’t talking about Torque and the only other Ghost we knew of that description out here was commander Fedorian.” Tang gave a small lilt of her mandibles and folded her arms across her chest in a show of her disdain for conversation. “We tracked those humans who were tracking you and here we are.”

Davix turned back to Torque then, unsure of what he could actually do to help. Davix was quite aware of what power his name held, spirits he’d suffered enough for it in his lifetime. Being the younger brother of the Primarch hadn’t done him many favours so far, so it was unclear how Torque could see him as a ticket off of Shanxi. But why weren’t the Hierarchy demanding the extraction of the Cabal units? The Cabal were not revered with much respect amongst the Palaveni population as a whole, but they were powerful, and they were a much-needed asset to the Turian Hierarchy, try as they might to deny them the privileges of the standard soldier.

It didn’t make sense.

“What’s having me in your numbers going to achieve?” Davix asked not without a chuckle of disbelief. “I mean, if the Hierarchy wanted me back so badly do you think I’d be wandering Shanxi in a beat up human tank wearing a bed sheet? I’m a good engineer but I’m by no means an asset.”

The troupe didn’t answer him and simply stared into the space between them before Torque lifted his crimson gaze to connect with his and delivered his answer.

“I suppose we were hoping your presence would deliver a bit of fear of the Primarch’s wrath into the Kabalim. That maybe you could convince him to allow us to leave…”

Davix wasn’t sure if he was hearing what the trio was attempting to explain correctly and he attempted to confirm this with yet another question.

“Are you saying that Kabalim Laruam is keeping you here by force?”

Preshura was gracious enough to clarify and she did so with such sorrow her voice was almost drowned out by the keen in her throat. “There’s more than one monolith. We’re here apparently to guard this second one until General Arterius returns to us… we fall in line or we are sacrificed to the monolith. He’s already taken so many of us. He will take more.”

Torque simply nodded then before lifting his eyes to Davix who stared back in a horrified disbelief, but it was what his good friend said next that made the ground fleet commander realise that he couldn’t sit back and allow this to simply just happen.

Turian biotic squads were not treated well as it was, focus groups were often being formed with how badly they were ostracised by their own, but this was a whole new level of misuse. Though Davix wasn’t sure what he could do or how he could help, a name could only take a man so far.

“He’ll kill us all…” was all Torque said.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Again I appreciate all feedback. I love love LOVE Reading what you think and kudos are always welcome! Thanks so much for reading!!


	9. The Darkest Colours

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings:
> 
> NSFW
> 
> Sexual themes, depictions of violence, and sexual assault will be present in this chapter. Discretion is advised. 
> 
> Notes:   
> Futuera: Palaveni phrase loosely translates into get fucked, or fuck you. 
> 
> Scorthim: Cipritian slang. Loosely translates into one who is unclean– an insult reserved for members not of the turian species later becomes human specific.
> 
> Tetigit ta, qua mea est: Palaveni phrase often used as a threat of violence amongst rival suitors. Loosely translates into you touched what is mine.

Hope was only a four-letter word.

A fictitious pipedream fabricated to keep the masses at bay. It had taken Sophie too long to realise this seeing that there was none to be had, at least not for her. The only constant in her life right now being a member of a species who was supposed to be her enemy, and he wouldn’t be there forever. It was only a matter of time before they would have to go their separate ways.

The mere notion of being without Davix weighed heavy in her chest.

Had she truly fallen so far, so fast?

Even her own kind didn’t give a damn if she lived or died, those men out in the field – now long dead -  would have quite happily killed her to get to the Ghost. He mattered more to them as an experiment than she did as a human being.

Where was this so-called _hope_ when the monster invaders from outer space showed her more compassion than members of her own species? Perhaps it had something to do with this scent marking thing; that _moment of weakness_ , as Davix had so eloquently put it.

That one moment when he’d claimed her as his own.

_“Take this time to think long and hard about why I didn’t take that second shot.”_

Torque’s words resonated in her head like a bad dream she simply couldn’t wake from. His aim had been to kill her, all humans that got in their way, but it was Davix’s actions that had stopped him from trying again, and his scent on her that had somehow dictated her fate there on after. She wasn’t certain whether she should be thankful for that at this point, lost and abandoned on this god-forsaken rock, she wasn’t sure what she should be feeling at all.

If it wasn’t for Davix and his “selfishness” she would be dead, but was that better than being forsaken by your own kind? What was awaiting her on the other side? What fate had she carved in the ever crumbling epitaph that was now her life? She couldn’t even bare to thing about it.

Sophie had been trapped in the turian tank for what felt like a lifetime as it sped towards an uncertain future. She had sat there mostly unmoving, silent and lost in her own thoughts for the most part. She’d listened to the turians surrounding her chatting about their predicaments and she had learned so much, not just about the Hierarchy but about Davix himself and just how important he seemed to be to the people who’d picked them both out of the field.

There was so much she didn’t know, so much he hadn’t told her, and the more she listened her greed for him swelled.

This _Primarch_ \- Palaven’s military leader and a man she had to consider was a member of royalty given how the turians spoke of him - was Davix’s older brother. He had only mentioned him briefly in past conversations and she was very aware that he had older siblings, but Sophie would have never guessed his name was so high up their ranking system. He’d told her he came from a powerful family, but power came in all different shapes and sizes as far as she was concerned.

Sophie was already aware of how militant and disciplined the turian people were, but she wasn’t aware until now that this order was a way of life for their entire species. Rank and order was so very important to them that any who didn’t fall within that typical ideal they were often cast away from society. It wasn’t any wonder so many of them were still here, following orders against their better judgements. It seemed the noble turians would walk right into a fire and simply burn to death if they were so ordered to without a second thought.

She had also learned who these Cabal operatives were; specialist operatives exposed to the very dangerous element zero in the womb – usually by accident – and with mutated brains aided by a device they called an amp, were able to emit powerful electrical and magnetic pulses to manipulate the very essence of the world around them. It seemed they were greatly feared and regarded as freaks amongst their own kind which seemed strange to Sophie. Such power honed within the ancient folklore of human kind had people revered as Gods. These poor souls were ostracised so badly they were ashamed to be what they truly were.

It seemed that being a member of the Cabal was so very far removed from a privilege amongst a people who build their lives upon a pedestal of honour.

The chatter had continued for a while and the topics changed a few times until the subject of their home-world – Palaven – was hot on the tongue. Apparently, it wasn’t common knowledge amongst the rest of the Cabal still stranded here that this general of theirs – Arterius, was it? – was dead, though apparently Davix had been informed by the people who’d captured him at Mt.Myka.

It was Torque’s turn to start asking the questions, his angry red eyes all but piercing the thick atmosphere in the tank dwelling.

“Who told you that?” the huge green turian queried with that same air of scepticism hanging in his voice.

Davix answered immediately though his tone was much softer than his much bigger counterpart, “The human leading that operation. Dowell I think, I can’t really remember. Everything was happening all at once…”

“Were you alone?” Tangine interrupted, the other two aliens sitting beside her offering her only a small glance before returning their attentions back to Davix.

“No,” was all he said initially, drawing his head back into his cowl, lowering his gaze to the space between him and the others. “There were others with me but they… ah… th-they didn’t make it.”

Sophie looked away then, her hands wringing anxiously in her lap at the sound of Davix’s soft whine in his chest. They hadn’t talked about it much since the day they met. A brief conversation under an overhang one evening had been about as far as they’d discussed what had actually happened at Mt.Myka. That was before he’d offered to take Ruban – that poor wretched child with his beautiful cobalt eyes – out of her nightmares. A method that had seemingly worked, at least for now. But still, hearing Davix talk about his old team was painful, having been thrust into the centre of the carnage herself.

She hadn’t known them, not at all, but she had witnessed the death of two of the five of them taken to Mt.Myka for whatever tests the humans were running. But knowing Davix as she did now, knowing and feeling for him how she did, it was enough for her chest to ache at the thought that he was still hurting so terribly for his team the humans had so needlessly and brutally murdered.

“What happened?” Preshura asked, her voice so strangely high pitched against the sultry rumbles from the others.

Davix simply shook his head, though he didn’t bother to make eye contact as he answered dully, “You don’t want to know.”

But it was Sophie who interjected, sensing that Davix was attempting to hide her away from the others. She would not hide, she would not cower away from her shame, she would face it and these people deserved to know what the humans had done to their comrades.

“I’m a forensic pathologist for the systems Alliance Military at the facility Davix and his team were taken to,” she started – albeit quietly – from her corner of the dwelling. Their eyes were upon her then but she couldn’t bring herself to connect their gazes with her own.

“I was sent here to study the life forms invading the colony.”

“Invading?!” Torque squalled, his subvocals all but squealing in his chest as he stood abruptly from his seat causing the tank to rock. “You flesh demons trespass on Citadel territory and you dare to call _us_ the invaders?!”

Sophie followed suit, getting to her feet and standing her ground, seemingly much to Davix’s dismay as he attempted to shield her from her much taller verbal opponent with a single arm. She didn’t refuse his need to protect her but that didn’t mean she couldn’t deliver her side of the case.

“How were we supposed to know that?” Sophie fired back, the fire in her chest burning with a deep rage that bubbled and frothed into her gullet. “It’s not like this _Citadel_ of yours cared to deliver us a handbook of the _Galaxy’s Do’s and Don’ts_ is it? Explain to me now how we’re supposed to follow rules we don’t know existed!”

Torque seemed a little taken aback by her outburst, so much so that his red eyes flitted between Davix and the two females seated behind him as though he was seeking some kind of support from them. Needless to say that there was none to be had but that didn’t mean he was finished with his argument.

“So you’re saying that we’re at fault?”

“No!”

All four turians looked at her then, though it was only Davix’s expression she could really read, brow plates raised high and his mandibles drooped low, his face was a picture of perplexity. And it was looking at him that forced her to settle her anger with a deep albeit shaky breath. They were listening, and they were taking in what she was saying. It was more than could be said for many humans.

“I’m saying that this whole mess could have been avoided, had we all a little more tact and a little less fight. No one is blameless here…”

“You humans are like children playing with a loaded gun! We had to step in!” Preshura – the blonde one – bit out, leaning forward in her seat towards Sophie.

“And is that how you teach your children right from wrong?” Sophie retorted, feeling that anger rise in her throat once again, the heat prickling the skin of her cheeks, “By taking the weapon from them and _shooting them with it_?!”

Preshura looked away then, satisfied that there was little else to be said at this point, her gaze shifting first to her red sister and then to her feet. Sophie noted that Davix had lowered his defences then, possibly realising that she didn’t really need protecting, and was now sitting a little further back on his gurney while the others looked on curiously.

“Everyone’s lost out here. We… Humans… we’re just curious, we’d made a tremendous breakthrough when we discovered the Charon relay, we just wanted to explore as I’m sure you did when you took to the stars…” This of course was only a part truth, humans even amongst their own were famous for their possessive nature. History told tales of invasion and civil wars over land and resources. But as a member of humanity, Sophie’s instinct demanded that she defend herself with these little white lies. Shanxi had no indigenous people, only the small animals that had mostly been left alone at least for now.

This time, however, it seemed that curiosity truly had killed the cat, or stunned it at the very least. Still, her argument was valid, even she knew this, and it seemed the rest of the troupe had lost their passion for the fight. Home truths were never nice to receive, but their unwillingness to endure the conflict spurred Sophie into continuing with what she originally wanted to tell them.

“But I also saw how the turians suffered… I saw the emaciated bodies of the dead and the dying. I saw how this planet damaged you… is still damaging you…” Sophie faltered then, the shame gripping at her heart so hard that she habitually lifted a hand to her chest and scrunched her fingers into the dingy shirt barely clinging to her. Thoughts of Ruban, his poor mother and Davix’s prison swarmed in her head that she had to close her eyes to regain her focus. “…I saw what we did…”

She swallowed hard before she dared to speak again, listening to questioning rumbles within the tank.

“… Davix was separated from his group… he was known to us simply as “The Ghost”. I’m not sure why but I’m guessing it was because he was so different from the others, I was not privy to this information at the time…”

Sophie noted how her voice had receded into her throat, the space in the tank suddenly getting smaller, tighter, and she found it a little harder to breathe.

“The others… there was a boy…”

Davix interrupted her then with a hand on her arm, wrapped so tightly around her wrist that it was almost painful, almost but not quite, but it was enough to knock her off course, so much that she looked him in the eye, his intense purple gaze boring through her but his voice was soft, so soft, flanged and oh so gorgeous.

“Sophie, don’t…” was all he said with a simple shake of his head. It wasn’t that he didn’t want her to tell the story, but he had been there when she struggled with her grief, he had been there those nights when she’d woke gasping for air, and he’d shared in her anguish when she was drowning in her guilt.

Davix was worried it was all going to come back, that the retuning of her emotional state would come undone, but she had to tell it. There was something inside of her that was pushing her towards that inevitable edge; that the turians were wrong in their methods, but so were the humans.

“There was a boy…” Sophie repeated, though not lifting her eyes from Davix, resting her free hand over his still wrapped firmly around her wrist to show that it was okay, that she was letting it go, that she was no longer blaming herself for the actions of others. If Davix had taught her anything, that was definitely it.

His gaze softened then, the intensity dying right before her eyes as acceptance took hold and he eventually lowered his sights to the space between them. Perhaps it was less about her telling the story and more about him not willing to relive it. Sophie carried on regardless.

“He was tortured and murdered in a show of bravado by our commanding officer. Another was shot in the head when attempting to defend a female selected for experimentation. She was still alive when we found her…”

Torque again interrupted her, suddenly irked by what he was hearing and the disbelief buzzing deep in his chest.

“What do you mean by ‘selected for experimentation?’? What the _fuck_ were you looking for?” He was angry, not that Sophie blamed him in the least but she still took that precautionary step back in reaction to his booming voice and that sinister glare of his evil red eyes. God, she _hated_ looking at him. 

“Don’t know,” she shrugged feeling disappointed in herself that she didn’t have the information that he wanted. Hell, if only she _did_ know, would that have even made a difference? But it was clear by the hideous growl Torque emitted that this simply wasn’t good enough as he sprang to his feet and lunged towards her.

It was Davix who intercepted him and considering that Torque was much bigger than he was, it just showed how strong Davix could truly be. She’d witnessed him picking up an engine block with little more than a grunt and now he was grappling a ten-foot alien. They struggled for a minute or two until Davix managed to push the huge green turian back into his chair causing the tank to sway with the impact.

“Careful, Chipran,” Davix started, his voice low and his harmonics lower as he glowered down on his comrade. “We’re not here to fight amongst ourselves.”

Torque didn’t bother getting to his feet but he did glare up at Davix, teeth barred and both mandibles fluttering irritably on either side of his face.

“You bring this _monster_ into my tank and expect me to like it? Futuera, Fedorian! _Futuera_!”

Davix didn’t react as such, though he turned away and returned to his seat, slowly and very deliberately. “Your rage is misplaced, lieutenant,” he droned tediously resting both elbows on his knees and allowing his hands to dangle. “If it wasn’t for this _monster_ , I’d be long dead, and where would your saviour be then, hm?”

The conversation died then, the silence almost deafening until Torque broke it once more seemingly quite eager to return to the previous conversation. “Arterius _is_ dead,” he started, prompting Davix to lift his head as though the information was actually new. Sophie surmised that hearing it from a comrade was very different than hearing it from your captor.

Davix didn’t ask the inevitable question as he simply sat there and stared at the much bigger turian, but Torque answered him anyway. “Air strike. They had to evacuate Cipritine to get to him. He’d killed hundreds before the warrant went out.”

Sophie recalled idly that Cipritine was Palaven’s capitol, presumably the seat of this Primarch they all idolised. But she couldn’t be certain, and she was quite sure that now probably wasn’t the right time to be asking those sorts of questions.

It was then that Torque attempted to make light of the situation with a joke, “I guess that would be why the Primarch has been so pre-occupied right?” He laughed but it seemed that no one else in the tank for him amusing. Needless to say that he didn’t laugh for long.

“This was the Temple in Cipritine only a few days ago, before the strike,” was all Preshura said as she handed Davix a device that looked remarkably like the data-pads Sophie used back in the lab – though a little more streamlined and a little more modern – and the vid began to play.

It was a news reel, though Sophie’s decoder struggled to pick up what the reporter – a female turian dressed in very brightly coloured clothes that resembled roman robes – was all but screaming into the camera.

There was chaos in the streets of this city, just people – turians - shouting and screaming and seemingly scrabbling away from a situation in the centre that was creating a dust storm to the rear of the reporter. She struggled to make much sense of what was going on but a brief glance at Davix made her realise that what was happening there was very serious. He was forlorn, the plates on his brow raised higher than she’d ever seen them, and his mandibles were pressed very firmly to his mouth save for the odd twitch here and there.

He was hurting, and whatever was going on in that vid was upsetting him further still. Sophie guessed that this Cipritine was his hometown - his birthplace or colony or whatever the hell the turians called it - but it went without saying that she could sense his anguish and she placed a single hand over his knee, her thumb rubbing comforting circles into the fabric now covering his legs.

He didn’t look at her, or flinch away like she thought he would, he simply lifted his free hand and placed it over hers without shifting another ounce. It seemed that he welcomed the comfort as he watched the destruction unfold on that small screen.

“What was he doing at the temple?” Davix asked dully, as the vid ended, and the screen went dark, though he didn’t lower it from his gaze for quite some time.

“Attempting to reinstate the Valluvian Priests.” Was all Torque said, grimly with a soft shake of his head and a dismal sigh.

“Valluvian Priests?” Sophie repeated and allowing her eyes to quizzically ghost over Davix’s slumped form. “What’s that?”

It took a while for him to answer, and he looked at her for the longest time before he did, though what he said did not resonate well with her, a solid brick of dread sitting in her bowels.

“A dead legend…” was all he uttered.

* * *

Watching his city, the place he was born, raised and tendered, burning was more difficult than he ever thought it would be. Knowing that a general so esteemed, so regimented, respected and decorated as Desolas Arterius could very well have caused the extinction of the Palaveni people was unfathomable.

The Valluvian Priests and their order was dead, had been for countless centuries. Temple Palaven had been sealed to coincide with the demise of this religion they no longer needed to reach the stars. The titans were a fable, things of fiction to frighten children to eat their meals and behave as a turian should. Stories to tell at firesides when the electrical storms seethed in Palaven’s angry molten skies.

It was Torque’s voice, a sound he’d never thought he’d hear again until this fateful evening, that drew his gaze to his old friend sitting opposite. “There’s some rumour that Arterius thought he could seize control of the galaxy from his seat within the temple.”

“For what gain?” Davix mused, noting that his own harmonics had died in his chest. There were no feelings to be had here, no emotion to spare for the demons being manifested by this monolith they talked about. He didn’t know what to feel knowing that his family were back home quite possibly fighting for their lives, and he was stuck out here on this shit hole of a human colony.

“We don’t know…”

The confusion in Torques tone didn’t come a much of a surprise, nothing about this situation made any sense at all. Desolas was a fine general – the finest, a fearless yet fair leader, but mostly he had been a _good_ man. He wielded power with a firm yet impartial hand, an example all of turian-kind looked up to. Even Davix, the youngest sibling of the Primarch of Palaven, himself, had once aspired to be as brilliant a man as Desolas Arterius and had taken his servitude under him as the greatest honour. To know this strange artefact had turned him on to a path of delusions and genocide was almost too much to take in. It wasn’t the Desolas Arterius everyone knew and respected. And it didn’t make sense.

“Do you really think Kabalim Laruam has gone the same way as Arterius?” Davix wasn’t entirely sure why he was asking this question again. There was little doubt given what the three sat in front of him had spoken of that the Kabalim had been corrupted into thinking the Valluvian Priests were returning from legend.

There was no answer from the other three which only solidified the facts. This man was dangerous, and seemingly in no position to lead anyone never mind a Cabal unit. Was the Fedorian name going to be enough to convince Laruam to let the until leave Shanxi? Somehow Davix doubted this and with Palaven’s attentions being soaked into Cipritine’s epidemic is was unlikely any distress signals sent forth were going to be enough for them to send anyone here looking for survivors, least of all biotics.

He looked at Sophie then; she sat next to him and looked much smaller than before crumpled into her seat. She was scared, not that he blamed her at all. She must be feeling how he had back when he was captured by the humans and taken back to their testing facility, not that this was the same situation by far. But she lifted her gaze to his, her shocking blue eyes still full of life, and they softened when she looked at him, a hue of a smile ghosting at the corners of her sweet, soft mouth.

And it was then that Davix realised that he was mentally preparing for a fight. But was it a fight to save his people from a crazed leader, or to protect the love of his life from the onslaught to come? He didn’t know, and, if he was going to be perfectly honest with himself, he didn’t really want to find out. Either way he was quite certain this wasn’t going to be a simple case of frightening a deranged biotic into releasing his captives.

The cost was going to be great.

People were going to die.

* * *

The purr of the turian tank’s engine wasn’t exactly the most beautiful thing Sophie had ever heard, though she had to admit this vehicle sounded much healthier than the abysmal drone from the old Mako. But her presence here spelled an uncertain future. In the Mako she knew her destination, with carefully planned routes gouged into the map of her corrupted omni-tool her fate was firmly in her own two hands. Here, in this dwelling amongst others that wished to cause her harm, that thread of destiny had been severed. She’d lost control of her fate, she wasn’t here by choice anymore but considering this hand she’d been dealt, what other choices did she now have?

Sophie was confident Davix wouldn’t let any harm come to her, but that wasn’t to say that the turians wouldn’t attempt to separate them at any point. She guessed that Davix being the commanding officer within the little troupe here in their tank was enough to have her tag along for now. She couldn’t see how she was of any use to the Hierarchy, so how this would all end was anyone’s guess.

Still the journey was made in silence, the two females returning to the front of the tank – the blonde one was the driver it seemed – while Torque, Davix and she remained in the dwelling. There was a heavy atmosphere, tangible, so much so that Sophie feared if she reached out she would physically touch it and so her focus remained on one of the many tiny viewing ports bordering the dwelling. Her mere existence within these walls was seemingly enough to sour the air, the least she wanted to do was to add to this so she surmised staying silent was the best course of action for now.

It took a while for her to realise that they were heading back into the warzone, that hard lump of unspeakable dread sat heavy in her guts, and it wasn’t until the construct appeared on the horizon that she realised exactly where they where heading; Hayfair Deep.

Sophie had never been this far south of the main colony sites since she’d arrived here on Shanxi, but she knew of this place quite well, though now far from a simple mining community it didn’t take long for her to recognise that the place was swarming with turians. They stood to attention along the border of the building site like stone soldiers, and that sickening lump already weighing inside of her churned.

Davix seemed to sense her apprehension of what she was seeing and placed a single hand on her shoulder which in turn startled her and caused her to spin her head to look at him.

“It’ll be alright,” he said, a knowing flare of his mandibles as if to confirm his statement, “I got you.”

Those three simple words again were enough to set her at ease if only a little, and Sophie smiled back at him, this behemoth of a man before her, this alien who’d shown her nothing but care and compassion.

Her one, her love.

“I know,” was all she said back, a simple reply but one that was enough for Davix to squeeze her shoulder reassuringly, that was before the huge green turian sat opposite interjected.

“I hope your pet knows how to behave,” he grumbled from his side of the tank though Sophie realised that it was actually her that he was addressing. “You’re about to go behind enemy lines. You do as you’re told, or you die. Understand?”

Sophie didn’t like where this was going, rules and conditions were about to be added to his original demand and rather than simply agree to his initial proposal, she sat and waited for him to reel off exactly what it was they needed from her in order to go largely unnoticed.

“You are a prisoner, as of now. None of this touchy stuff you two have been enjoying lately,” Torques demonic red eyes seethed at Davix at that moment, he looked at him as though he should know better before he refocused on her again. “Conform and we’ll release you as soon as we have established an escape from this spirit forsaken rock. Do I make myself clear, human?”

She didn’t like it, hell she wasn’t even sure why they were taking her back with them, they could have very well simply left her in the field but something inside of her told her that deep rooted culture and instinct demanded that she remain with the one who had marked her as his mate. Sophie thought to contest what was being asked of her, but she simply nodded, allowing her gaze to fall into the space between them.

It went without saying that she wasn’t looking forward to what awaited her behind those rapidly approaching gates.

* * *

Hayfair Deep was a fairly spacious community established to mine specifically for palladium; a metal not dissimilar to platinum and upon Shanxi’s discovery it seemed the planet was very rich in these rare metals humanity needed so desperately if their ever-expansive discovery of space was to reach any kind of fruition.

The building surrounding the mine was thrown up in only a matter of a couple of weeks though by the sight of it now Sophie could have easily mistaken the build to be at least fifty years old with the amount of sheer damage and neglect on the outer shell of the otherwise clinical dwellings.

The turians really had made a mess of it, it seemed. Half of the buildings on the west side had been levelled to the ground. Nothing remained but rubble and dust.

It was so difficult to believe that little over three months ago this now derelict mining site was once a very active, colourful community. The sight of it and sheer ambience this place projected hit Sophie like a powerful blow to the chest as she exited the vehicle to be faced with this human built settlement of the sheer damage this war had caused. Sophie didn’t dare to think how many people had suffered and died at turian hands for them to occupy this place.

“Get in front, human. No dawdling. Move it!” Came Tangine’s – the ginger one – command as she stood behind her and forcibly shoved her forward with a firm hand at the base of her neck. She pushed her so hard, Sophie had to stop herself from falling as she stumbled forward, she even looked over her shoulder and gave Tangine a sorrowful glance at this sudden change of pace, but it was all a part of the game.

Right?

It was a _game_ they were playing.

Tangine was quite convincing in her aggression so Sophie wasn’t all that certain it was all an act. It took almost every ounce of energy she had to prevent her lips trembling. It was easy to see now how she was out of the frying pan and straight into the fire.

Sophie was aware the female turian’s pistol was pointed directly between her shoulder blades, and she was also aware the gun was armed and ready to fire. She also saw Davix react to Tangine pushing her onward and noted the irritable flutter of his mandibles towards the much smaller female turian, but he had his own part to play. Sophie was his prisoner and they both had to make it at least a little convincing.

Davix was the supposed saviour of the Cabal. In the hopes that his mere presence here would be enough for their leader to relinquish his hold over his unit and allow them to simply go home, he had a lot on his plate right now and Sophie surmised that she had best behave if she wanted to come out of the other end of this mess alive at the very least.

He walked in front, dressed only in the thin black pants Torque had given to him back in the tank she chose to lock her eyes on his back. It was only then that she saw his scars; deep fractures that ran jaggedly over each shoulder as though a tool had been inserted there and dragged across his hide. The wounds looked painful, deep, but they looked old, having now faded back to a strange pale mauve against the tan of Davix’s hide. It was strange that she hadn’t noticed these scars before now, but she attempted not to let herself get consumed by them – by him - she had to remain focused on being the captive as she was marched ever forward.

The group were halted by a gatekeeper – a male turian, tall and grey with dark green eyes and yellow markings trailing only over the bridge of his nose - who demanded clearance from Torque and then eyed both she and Davix suspiciously.

“Boy, if you fail to recognise a Fedorian when you see one then you need your eyes testing,” Torque mocked, but not without his trademark glare that seemed to instil a certain amount of fear into the turian he was addressing.

The grey alien bowed then and expressed his apologies to _‘Commander Fedorian’_ , to which Davix followed suit and he moved to one side to allow the group to pass though.

“I’ll take this thing to a holding cell, Commander,” the grey turian deadpanned as he reached towards Sophie and went to grab her arm. Before she could recoil, however, Davix was there and he grasped the other alien’s wrist, seemingly hard enough to cause pain given the groan that left his mouth.

“You’ll take _her_ nowhere, back in line, _grunt_ ,” Davix hissed through little more than barred teeth and with such venom in his tone Sophie was certain she saw the grey male wince and attempt to recoil though not before eyeing Sophie over once more. 

He made no apology this time and simply stood back to allow them to pass through, as they did, however, it didn’t escape Sophie’s notice that the grey turian with his green eyes and yellow markings watched her pass, seemingly now disinterested in the others. It shouldn’t have come as a surprise that Sophie was being watched closely by the members of this alien community. She was the only human amongst a vast turian populace after all, but there something she found quite unsettling about how this particular one looked at her so much so that she broke eye-contact with him as soon as she was past the gates and headed deeper into the compound. It was the first time in a long while that a man’s stare had made her skin crawl and she couldn’t stop the visible shudder in an attempt to shake off his eyes.

The moment Grey was out of earshot, Torque turned to Davix, his face very close to his much smaller counterpart, his red eyes boiling angrily deep in their sockets below his emerald brow.

“Keep it together, Fedorian. Ain’t no use to us if you lose your shit over your little pet!”

“Call her that again and _you’ll_ see me _lose my shit_ , Chipran!”

There was some hostile posturing and a rather loud harmonised aggression between the two huge males, which served to have Sophie back away nervously into the females behind her who showed her little more compassion as Grey did with the barrels of their weapons digging into her back, before the larger of the two relented and they proceeded to walk deeper into the complex.

Davix’s entire demeanour had switched the moment they’d entered the compound and Sophie wasn’t sure she liked it. He was on the defence and aggressive with his conduct which contradicted the way in which she had gotten to know him out in the field. It made sense, if she was to think about it hard enough; he was bringing a human into the midst of her enemy, he was seeking to protect her while also trying to distance himself from her so not to generate too much interest. Still she was thankful she wouldn’t be spending any amount of time in a holding cell, she had that much to thank him for at that moment.

A brief conversation between Torque and another turian – female this time – seemingly on guard duty out by the habitats on the far side of the complex had confirmed that this Kabalim of theirs was temporarily unreachable. Though once again, Davix was greeted with a great amount of respect, or at least what Sophie was construing as respect from the other turians in the facility. If she wasn’t mistaken it seemed the others here were actually very pleased to see him, perhaps his reputation and position within the Hierarchy would very well be enough to get them away from Shanxi.

“Where is he then? If we’re going to talk I’d rather get it over with…” Davix complained, seemingly exasperated by the whole ordeal as he crossed his arms over his chest with a frustrated huff.

“He prays to the damn monolith down in the mine. He’ll be there now until the next day cycle. It’s best not to disturb him, he’ll only get angry,” Tangine interjected, finally sheathing her weapon as the troupe stood idly by the dwellings.

“I don’t understand why we’re wasting time, we need to get things in motion now,” Davix retorted irritably until Torque once again pulled him into his demonic red glare.

“I want off this fucking rock as much as the next man. But if you want to become one of those things Laruam has keeping him company down there then have at it. I ain’t gonna stop you.” It was Davix’s turn to relent and lower his gaze to the space between them though only until his big green friend’s voice softened and offered a hand towards one of the many doors littering complex.

“I will establish a meeting tomorrow, and I’ll come up with a way to convince the Kabalim to allow us passage back to Palaven. For now, you and your… _friend_ , can rest easy. You’ve had it rough, my friend. It may get rougher still.”

They stopped at the entrance of a dwelling seemingly handpicked by Torque to house the pair of them for the evening. A large family unit fully furnished and seemingly untouched since the turians had occupied the mine. Sophie had only just stepped over the threshold, expecting Davix to follow until she turned on her heel and saw that he was being apprehended by the blonde turian of their troupe, Preshura.

She had slipped between Sophie and him very quickly and it was so very clear to see only by her body language – seemingly very similar to humans by all accounts – that she was attempting to flirt with him. An action that cause the heat to rise into Sophie’s throat despite how Davix seemed to stare right through her.

“You know, we might not make it out of this alive, Davix,” Preshura said to him huskily, while trailing a single talon over his bare keel as she leaned against the doorway, preventing him from entering with a slanted foot. “What do you say to a little… _meeting_ later? Like old times, hm?”

Davix didn’t really react to the female’s ministrations, he was disinterested in her offer – this much was quite obvious - but this did little to quell the anger boiling in Sophie’s guts at the sight of this other woman attempting to make a move on her man.

“No thanks,” was all Davix said flatly and attempted to push past the smaller turian who then grabbed his arm in that strange girly way that she did and pulled him back into the hall. All Sophie could do at that moment was simply stand there and seethe, she wasn’t even aware that she was grinding her teeth. She hadn’t liked Preshura since she’d met her in the tank and Sophie hadn’t quite been able to put her finger on why.

Now she knew.

_Now she **knew**. _

“Oh, come on, Davix. You remember how good we used to be together right? It was good, _so good_ right?” Preshura clung to him like a thing possessed even as Davix resisted and simply looked back at her blankly. But Sophie had seen enough. It was bad enough to know that this girl was brazenly flirting with the object of her desire but knowing that there was a history between them was too much. The jealousy had gotten the better of her.

“Are you deaf?! He said _no_!” Sophie bellowed, forcing herself between the two turians who were, of course, both much bigger than her. Even so it was enough to drive Preshura away from the habitat if only a little as Sophie stood in front of her and held her ground, fists balled wrathfully at her sides. “Which part of _no_ don’t you get?!”

The female, tall and very yellow in colour with her deep set blue eyes, stared back for a moment before she laughed with a wide flare of both decorative mandibles and stepped back towards Davix, shamelessly shoving Sophie to one side with a harsh shunt of a single three-digit hand against her face. It had gone largely unnoticed by the trio that the other two were watching at a near distance.

“Fuck off, human, I’m not talking to you,” the female spat but not before that red mist had descended and Sophie turned on her, without thought, without an ounce of remorse for her next action and she sank her teeth into the soft fabric surrounding Preshura’s hand that was still wrapped around Sophie’s face. There was something oddly satisfying about the way the rough flesh of the female’s flesh crunched under the pressure.

Preshura yelped in pain, pulling her hand away sharply and dragging a much smaller Sophie with her. There was a scuffle between the two of them as Preshura attempted to unlatch the small human from her by slamming the palm of her other hand against Sophie’s brow as the pair of them fell to the floor. The blows to her head were barely felt over her rage roiling in her gut and the bitter taste of turian blood that was trickling into her mouth. It tasted vile, bitter, like strong paracetamol dissolved in water.

“Get it off! Get it off! _Get it off me_!” the female shrieked just before they were separated by the huge green alien who then stood between them both, flashing his evil red eyes first at Sophie in unmistakeable disdain until his attention was drawn to Preshura who was still bleating about the wound on her hand.

“It bit me, that thing fucking bit me! _Scorthim!_ You _scorthim_!!” Preshura squealed, and it was with a growl that she spun on her feet and lunged at Sophie who simply stood there immovable. It was Torque who proceeded to grab the smaller, yellow woman by the shoulder and push her back harshly, causing her to stumble and almost trip over her own feet.

“Pull your mandibles in, girl, before I do it for you!” he scolded, and not without the condescending pointed finger in Preshura’s face. She stood there, sulkily holding her hand, sore and bleeding while glaring at the floor. Torque turned his attention to Davix then, who Sophie had only just realised was holding her harshly by the wrist like a naughty child.

“Teach your _friend_ some decorum, Fedorian. If she wants to behave like an animal she can sleep outside with the rest of the wildlife.” With that said he and the others disappeared into the crowd of dwellings though Preshura’s whines could still be heard even behind the closed doors of the habitat that Davix had ushered her into only moments ago.

But it was then, when the gravity of the entire situation started to dawn on her that Davix turned to look at her over his shoulder, and it was plain to see that he was less than impressed with her behaviour.

* * *

“What in Palaven’s name was that?!” he yelled, though unintentionally and he regretted it the instant Sophie flinched away from him and backed into the doorway. Either way, he was struggling to comprehend what had just happened outside or why Sophie, this sweet little human he’d met here, had suddenly turned into this violent wrecking ball.

“She started it…” was all she said meekly, wringing her hands awkwardly and not daring to look at him. Though it went without saying that her defence was just as weak as her voice.

“ _What_? Started _what_?” Davix didn’t hope for an answer to that, nor did he wait for one as he stepped closer and stooped over to her level, an action that forced her to look him right in the eyes as he spoke, much softly now. It wouldn’t do to be overheard by the wrong people. “Sophie, we’re in _so_ deep here, I’m not sure you understand how much danger you’re in already. You can’t just go around biting people just because they pissed you off! You need to keep your head down, do you understand me?”

“But it’s okay for her to push me in the face? Is that it? She can disrespect me because I’m a filthy human, but I have to just stand there and take it like a _good_ little mouse!” she yelled back while pointing a finger at the door panel behind her, her meek demeanour now a thing of the past as the blue of Preshura’s blood around her mouth glinted in the artificial light of the room. It was then that he was sure he could see tears in her eyes. It was that sight of her emotions shining through that caused him to deflate, she was angry, and even Davix knew that she had every right to be, but he would have to deal with Presh another time.

“No, of course not, but…”

“But what?! She was disrespectful!”

“So, you just bit her?”

“Yes! And I’d do it again if she so much as tries to…” She trailed off and quickly looked away, her mouth trembling and her fists clenching and unclenching at her sides. It was then that a tear betrayed her and it rolled down her cheek though Sophie wasted little time in snatching it away with a vicious swipe of her hand. Sniffing harshly she gingerly licked at her lips, grimacing at the taste of blood still clinging to her skin and she turned further away shamefully.

“Sophie?” Davix stepped closer to her then, purposefully lowering his voice so not to sound aggressive as he began to piece together why she had reacted in such a way. How could he be so dense, so blind as not to see it sooner than now? But still calling her out on her insecurity was probably not the best move now. Perhaps he could coax it out of her. “What’s _really_ going on?”

She wasted little time with her response though not without her signature spiteful glare.

“Nothing! I’m just angry,” she scoffed before she stalked past him and deeper into the room. Davix watched her go, knowing that she was lying, and perhaps guilty of enjoying the fact that a woman had actually become possessive over him. _Him_ , big, ugly Adavixus Fedorian. He had to admit that it felt rather nice for someone to want him all to themselves, even if they didn’t particularly want to admit it.

“We could talk about it, maybe?” he started with a hint of a grin tugging at his mandibles. “I mean, if you wanted to, of course.”

It seemed his offer had caught her off guard and Sophie paused mid-flow as she reached what looked like a cooling unit on the far side of the dwelling. She turned towards him, though not enough for her gaze to find him in the artificial light of the room, but just enough for him to know that she was listening and was waiting for more confirmation that her behaviour wasn’t totally unfounded.

He had to admit that Preshura was an acquired taste; she wasn’t for everyone. She was small for a turian, but she made up for her lacking in height with her claxon of a mouth and her brash demeanour. Even Davix, who’s patience could quite possibly be stretched from the Apien Crest right through to the Far Rim, tired of her antics after a time.

“But there’s nothing between me and Preshura, that much I can promise you.” Davix chuckled a little as if to accentuate just how ridiculous it would be if she was interested. Even so he’d called her out, and the horror that filled her eyes was quite comical, so much so that Davix had to pull both mandibles in if only to convince her that he didn’t find her jealousy at least a little amusing.

Still, after the few seconds of her coming to terms with the fact that Davix had figured out the root of the issue Sophie didn’t seem all that satisfied with Davix’s reassurance and she showed this with a sideways glance. But she didn’t deny his unspoken accusation.

“Are you interested in her?” She asked, the envy creeping back into her voice as she turned a little more towards him.

“No,” he answered honestly, allowing himself to sit on the human designed sofa that dominated the main sitting room. It was an awkward fit, the cushions of the couch didn’t curve enough with his cowl for the sit to be totally comfortable and so he was forced to lean forward, but he had to make the best of a bad situation.

“But you’ve slept with her.”

“A few times, not recently. I haven’t seen her for a few years.”

There was a quiet that dropped into the room as Sophie opened the cooling unit and pulled out a bottle of what he could only assume was water and poured the contents into a glass. He watched her take a sip from the glass before she turned and perched against the worktop and it seemed that she struggled to look at him as she spoke again.

“How did you meet?”

Davix shrugged at her with the lilt of both mandibles. He didn’t really understand what the actual issue was, he and Presh had never been anything even remotely close to lovers. They’d meet up, they’d fuck and that was that. Blowing off steam was important to keep ones sanity in check even if he hadn’t taken part in such activities for a few years. Celibacy was much preferred over the emptiness he’d feel after an evening of meaningless copulation.

“Gatherings,” he answered simply, unsure of how else to put it but the quizzical glare Sophie shot him was more than enough to tell him that she needed more than just that.

“You know, a group of people turn up to an event and blow off steam together. It’s a good way to bond and get to know one another.”

“By _blow off steam_ you mean _have sex_.”

It was no question by any stretch of the imagination, rather a statement and Sophie was quite aggressive in her delivery, but Davix answered anyway.

“Yes, that’s exactly what I mean.”

She looked away sharply, displeased with this information, chewing on her lower lip before she lowered her gaze to her feet. It went without saying that there was nothing quite as confusing as a conflict of cultural difference. It wasn’t the first time he’d been questioned about the polyamorous nature of a turian, most other species didn’t quite understand how sex was used as a social interaction as opposed to a commitment to a single mate, but Sophie’s reaction was a little extreme at best.

Sometimes it was easy to forget why the humans called this battle their ‘First Contact War.’

“So, you attend orgies… is that right? You just go to a place and _fuck_ a bunch of people in one night?” Sophie quizzed, the aggression in her tone quaking deep in her throat as she splayed her hands as if to display her findings to him, and he was able to see the angry fire burning in her eyes. If she had the ability to use sub-harmonics, Davix had no doubt that she would be screeching at him right about now.

He wasn’t sure he was liking this conversation. It was clear to see that what was very normal and actively encouraged in his culture simply wasn’t in hers and he couldn’t help the frown that pulled at his brow as he observed her stance from his seat on the couch. She was stiff, her jaw clenched, and it was obvious that she was getting upset again as she glowered at him from beneath strands of filthy hair.

“You make it sound like I’ve done something wrong,” he said, careful not to allow his subvocals to project the uncertainty in his tone. “Humans don’t do that, do they?”

“No! They don’t!” She bit out, picking up her glass of water as if to drink from it, thinking better of it and slamming the glass back down on the surface to the side of her. “I mean, don’t you see how degrading it is?”

“Degrading?” Davix was taken aback initially by the insult but again, the differences in culture were vast, and it had to be said that this was the first time they’d truly clashed since they’d met in his tiny holding cell back at the human testing facility only days ago. Sophie didn’t expand on her statement and simply stood there, her blue eyes locked irritably with his awaiting whatever information she was seeking, which in turn enticed Davix to fill in the spaces as best as he could.

“I don’t see how it’s _degrading_. It’s just sex, I honestly don’t understand why you’re getting so upset. I mean we’re all consenting adults, it feels nice, what’s the big deal?”

Sophie huffed, though her expression had changed from what Davix could translate as anger to one exasperation as she struggled to find an adequate comeback, but it was Davix again who interjected before giving Sophie another chance to torture herself over his past. The jealousy was endearing at first – Davix had never received this sort of attention before and he simply couldn’t resist selfishly revelling in it just a little bit - but he was starting to see that she didn’t like this aspect of herself. It was time to put this one to bed, so to speak.

“It’s not like _I’ve_ taken part recently anyway, if that’s what’s concerning you.”

Her expression softened then, her mental defences lowering as her body seemed to loosen against the countertop in response to his statement – relief perhaps - and she countered it with a surprisingly affectionate, “Why?”

Davix shrugged at her, a slow lilt to his mandibles as he fondled his fingers on his lap.

“There’s something very unsatisfying about sex without emotion. It makes you feel empty inside, eventually…” he paused as he thought about his words. It was the first time in a very long time that he’d even thought about it. About how he’d closed his own doors to any potential partners, how he’d somehow made a strange unsettling peace with the notion that he would spend the remainder of his life alone. He’d attended these events with the slim hopes that he would walk away with something a little more than just a good time, that he would find that someone like his brother and sister had.

“… I’d rather just fix cars to be honest.” Davix heard himself chuckle, unhappily, at how ridiculous he must sound, but Sophie didn’t laugh which he found actually surprised him a little. But it was nice to know that she didn’t find this insecurity of his funny.

He'd long accepted that there was no one out there for him.

Except that there was, and she had been stranded on Earth all of this time, until now, as she stood there looking at him with those gorgeous blue eyes that conveyed far more emotion than any word she could utter.  

But he wasn’t about to call on that, tempting fate was something he knew he probably shouldn’t do, least of all now.

There was a quiet moment between them, one of the many that they’d shared so far, and possibly of the many to come, a moment of contemplation as Sophie wiped the now dry blood from her face with her bare hands and seemingly reflected on what had happened only moments ago. She stared at her hands for the longest time and the look of shame on her face resonated so deeply with him that her unspoken emotion made him feel profoundly unsettled deep within the quiet of this strange, alien room.

“Sit with me?” Davix asked quietly as he patted the space in the sofa next to him if only to break the silence. It seemed to work as Sophie first stared pointedly at the spot Davix was offering to her, before she accepted, padded towards him sluggishly and plonked herself down next to him with an exhausted sigh.

“I’m an idiot, aren’t I?” she stated simply before shyly glancing up at him with a downturned grimace and hunch of her shoulders. “I’m sorry…”

“Don’t be. Presh’ll get over it. She should be used to it by now anyway, it’s not the first time a woman has had a go at her. She’s always upsetting someone’s fur.”

“Ruffling feathers,” Sophie corrected and not without that amused chuckle whenever he messed up one of those human sayings of hers. And she looked at him then, from beneath her dark dirty hair, her eyes still so bright, full of life despite the rough ride the pair of them had endured these past few cycles.

Spirits, he loved her.

What he wouldn’t give to just be her mate, to have her as his.

“I guess,” she lifted her shoulders coyly though her bright blue eyes dropped suddenly into the space between them before she continued. “I don’t want to have to share…”

His mandibles flared at that, he couldn’t help it. This pretty girl, this gorgeous little thing sat beside him wanted him all to herself. He’d never had that before, he’d never felt so treasured and wanted like he did right now. A concept so foreign, so strange - _alien_ \- and yet so welcome that he could feel himself grow warm deep in his core at the thought that Sophie thought of him in such a way. The fact that she was assuming there could be possibly more to what they had already certainly hadn’t passed him by.

Their relationship was doomed, had been from the start, but they were pursuing it anyway. They wanted it enough to simply ignore whatever consequences were awaiting them on the other side of this damn awful mess they were now a part of.

It was with a hooked, clawed finger beneath her chin that Davix lifted Sophie’s face, forcing her to look him with those shocking watery eyes.

Spirits, she was gorgeous.

Simply gorgeous.

“Who said you have to share? I was yours the moment you kissed me.”

Her eyes softened then, the smile that spread wide on her soft mouth almost too much to resist as he allowed his thumb to stroke her supple lips and lowering his head to allow their brows to meet. He closed his eyes at the contact, relishing in her warmth as she touched his face with her small delicate hands, bathing in her affection for him as he cooed and sang deep in his chest, telling her he loved her, how much he wanted her, how he wished he could keep her.  

“Maybe they’ll let me take you home,” he purred to her shuffling a little closer still.

“Home?” Sophie mused amusedly, “Where’s that?”

He pulled away, if only to look at her.

“Palaven, I think you’d like it there,” he said, listening to her hum curiously, “It’s warm, and we have some of the best beaches in all of Inner Council Space.”

She laughed, a flutter of breaths that had to be the most beautiful thing he’d heard in what seemed like an eternity.

He loved her that little bit more when she laughed.

“You know, that’s quite the claim to make,” she scolded lightly and tapping the tip of a pointed finger on his nose, an action that caused him to scrunch his entire face up. “Earth has some beautiful beaches.”

“Maybe we should compare, hm?”

Sophie’s smile widened then, her eyes creasing as her soft pink cheeks filled out her face in that delightfully human way they did.

“I’d like that,” she hummed warmly.

Spirits, she was gorgeous.

Simply gorgeous.

It was then that the main door of the habitat opened and the fiery red plates of Tangine entered the room which dragged the attention from one another to her. Definitely not a welcome distraction, to be put mildly.

“Lieutenant Chipran has found some armour that would fit your build, commander. I’ve been sent to collect you…” she eyed over the couple before lowering her head at the realisation that her timing couldn’t have been more off the mark. “… sorry for interrupting.”

* * *

Davix had left the room with Tangine to collect this armour of his they’d found. He had wanted to take Sophie along with him, but she was tired and in a desperate need of a shower so she offered instead to stay at the dwelling.

It went without saying that, save for Davix, Sophie had quite had enough of any turian interactions today – she didn’t particularly want to bump into the small yellow one again that was for sure -  and she sighed in a strange relief when the door slid closed behind them.

This had to be the first time in what had to be over a week where it was just her and her thoughts. A time to reflect, to take stock of her situation and perhaps freshen herself up for when the Earth’s Alliance military finally caught up with her. It was inevitable, but for now she would revel deep within this spacious room and not think too much about what awaited her on the other side.

Take the good out of an otherwise awful situation.

The habitat was spacious, the main sitting room where she was standing at that moment, connected to a smaller kitchenette which had large windows that projected the artificial lights of the compounds flood lights into the room. It wasn’t quite _home_ but it was comfortable and Sophie mused idly how she could have benefited from a dwelling like this back at Mt.Myka instead of the little cot she had been forced to use in her lab.

There were three doors with the exception of the main exit that led to other rooms – one was surely a bathroom and she wandered towards one of these thresholds to explore just as the main entry to the habitat slipped open.

Naturally, Sophie assumed it would be Davix returning, though surely, he hadn’t been gone for longer than a few minutes.

“You can’t have forgotten something you don’t have…” She trailed off as she turned to face her visitor to be greeted with a foreign and yet familiar face in the room. “… anything…”

Sophie swallowed hard, backing into the room as the turian invader entered and it took a few moments of panicked contemplation to figure out where she had seen his face before. Those yellow markings splattered across an otherwise cool grey carapace that sheltered a set of dark green eyes.

The gatekeeper.

The man who’d made her skin crawl.

The one who’d wanted to lock her in a cell.

“I didn’t think he’d leave you on your own so soon, such a pretty little flower you are, eh?” he said, his voice no longer stoic like it had been back at the entrance to the complex but low, sultry and harmonised by something acutely unsettling and sinister deep in his throat.

Sophie didn’t answer, though she let out a startled whimper the moment her back met with the worksurface in the kitchenette. She was cornered, with nowhere to go. He had a weapon and she had nothing, she could scream but no one would come.

No one would come.

These people didn’t care.

She thought about asking him what he wanted, but Sophie was quite certain she didn’t want to know, it was clear by his stance that his intentions were ill. Instead she eyed over the exit, now closed but still in sprinting distance, weighing up her chances, knowing they were slim. And she bolted, seemingly taking the intruder by surprise, knocking him to one side as she rushed past, but she never made it to the door. A strange stiffness came over her suddenly, not cold like ice but hot in her joints as her prereferral vision was cloaked in a bizarre blue glow. She was seized in an invisible vice like grip, her joints now locked in place and she fell to the floor stiffly.

She could still breathe, her eyes still able to move and see but her entire body was no longer hers, frozen solid, as she lay on the floor at her attacker’s feet. It was suddenly understandable why biotics were so feared. As he stepped over her she felt her joints loosen, though not before he leaned over and twisted his long fingers into her hair and dragged her to her feet.

Sophie scrabbled as best as she could, her hands flying to that one point on her scalp so blistering painful as he all but dragged her across the floor towards the sofa. She yelped and whimpered in pain as he did so but he didn’t speak.

He didn’t speak.

She wasn’t strong enough to fight him, she wasn’t strong enough to resist even as he shunted her towards the sofa with the flat of his armoured foot and she collided bodily with it, her hips jolted by the corner of the couch, she was trapped here alone with this creature, this monster who’d coveted her from his position on the gate. And he surrounded her, his body pressed against hers she froze in unadulterated fear, knowing what was coming, knowing his intention.

She’d been here before.

“Don’t resist, little flower. Don’t resist,” he whispered to her, the stench of his breath was pungent as it invaded her head, so hot against her skin as she quaked in fear, feeling his sharp fingers wrapping around her wrist.

“Please, please don’t…” she whimpered, though she was certain appealing to this predator’s better nature was a waste of time. He’d done this before, this she knew without asking. He’d done this before and he revelled in it as he was doing now.

And it was so familiar.

So familiar and terrifying that it made her sick to her stomach that he was touching her at all.

“Shh,” he cooed, his vile hands slipping under her shirt, his claws cold against her skin. “Just relax, you might even enjoy it.”

She felt her heart leap into her throat.

_“You might even enjoy it.”_

As the turian’s voice warped in reality.

_“You might even enjoy it.”_

And penetrated her mind.

_“You might even enjoy it.”_

**_James._ **

She could hear James saying those exact words to her as he straddled her midriff and tore at her clothes while she cried for him to stop. She’d lacked the strength then to fight back, she’d lacked the metal capacity to allow her body to defend itself.

Not this time.

_Not this time._

**_Not ever._ **

He would not have her.

He would not.

The fear had long dissipated, now replaced by a white-hot anger that boiled in her guts, her eyes attracted now to an empty glass at the side of the sofa, she couldn’t reach it, but it was the touch of his talons against her breast that forced her into action.

She was not his.

And he would not have her.

History was not about to repeat itself.

“Take your hands…” she started, her words hissing through clenched teeth as she swung her head back, her scalp colliding with the turian’s nose, and she felt that distinctive crunch of plates cracking under pressure and his hold on her suddenly released. “… off me!!”

Her hissed demand had suddenly morphed into a scream, as the large turian reeled back, mewling in pain and his hands cupping his face, Sophie turned onto her back, her legs still too week from whatever pulse control he’d used on her before for her to run and grabbed the empty glass from the side of the sofa.

Predictably the male became angry, the blood, thick and sickeningly blue puffled in slimy bubbles out of his nose and dribbled over the plates of his mouth as he unfolded his maw and let out a deafening screech. She winced against it, noting how she’d heard that noise before, how Davix had screamed in that very same way before he’d lunged his powerful body towards Richard. It was a primitive language, a war cry, a warning of attack and true to her assumption he lunged at her, talons splayed, mandibles flared, and jaws parted so wide to display those rows of needle sharp teeth embedded in his dragons’ maw.

She let him come, and with a cry of her own she smashed the glass into his face, rubbing the shards on his eyes giving no mind to how they shredded the palm of her own hand.

“Fuck you!” Sophie screamed against the cries of agony from her attacker. “Fuck you!”

He reeled back again but he was soon on top of her once more, nose and eyes bleeding and he hit her around the head with the back of his fist, so hard that she almost feared he would break her neck ad she felt her cheek explode against her teeth inside her mouth and the scales of his fist tear the flesh just above her right eyebrow.

But the onslaught didn’t last, even as the blood from her new headwound seeped into her eyes she saw his jaws unfold once more but a voice from the doorway caught his attention.

“That’s quite enough, _private_. Back up, and do it slow, you hear me?”

She didn’t recognise the voice, though unmistakably turian given the flanged vocals, his voice was smooth and light which caused her to attempt to get a better look at her saviour.

He looked around the same build as the man still sat bleeding on top of her. His plates where white, so white that the light that shone in from the window bounced off of him and hurt her eyes, but she was able to see the purple markings decorating his face. His armour was black much like Torque’s had been and he brandished a pistol, one that he was pointing directly at her attacker.

“C’mon, boy. You’ve had your fun. Back up.”

“What does it matter? She’s human, why do you care?”

“Because she ain’t your toy to play with, and the boy she belongs to is gonna be pissed. Back up. I won’t ask again.”

He did as he was asked, though Sophie didn’t move an inch as he removed himself from her, her body still shivering from her ordeal, the throb in her head pulsing against the beating of her heart, the blood from her cheek running thickly down her throat. There was a moment of contemplation from the two turians in the room, that was until a distinctive rumble was heard from outside, raised voices and sudden panicked movements from the two stood in front of her.

It was the white turian, now turned towards the door, his hands now raised still with pistol in hand that spoke first.

“Davix, buddy, calm down we got him. We got…” before White could finish speaking Davix, though now clothed in very bright armour entered the room, shunting White out of the way with a very simple yet strong hand which almost made the smaller of the two fall all his length outside. He didn’t even look at Sophie who was now scrabbling to her feet on legs that felt like jelly, but stomped past her just as the intruder fell to the floor in a desperate yet feeble attempt to get away from his now much bigger opponent.

He was screaming in that strange tongue she’d heard him use before. So loud that she winced against the noise.

“ _T_ _etigit t_ _a_ _, qua mea est_ _!”_

Davix stooped low, grabbing the smaller male around the neck with a massive hand and dragged him from the floor like little more than a doll. He spun his body, the armour now surrounding his strong shoulders making him look even more enormous than he was already, and launched the smaller male against the wall. There was another yelp of pain as he hit the floor and what sounded like pleas of mercy as Davix followed him.

There were others entering the room now, the White one from before as well as Preshura and Tangine though they seemed to be trying to restrict Davix’s access to the grey one who was still crumpled on the floor.

Sophie didn’t stick around to see what happened next, her gut reaction to get away from the carnage and she bolted for one of the doors behind the sofa. Upon entering, her breaths cutting into her throat and the blood stinging her eyes she slammed the door behind her and backed into the room, still gasping and hearing the angry shrieks from the sitting room.

She needed to get away.

It wasn’t until her legs hit the rim of the bathtub that she realised where she was as her body fell into it and she habitually reached out to steady herself, the shower curtain being the only thing within reach. She pulled it from the rail, the plastic rings holding it in the air snapping one by one as she tumbled into the basin and the curtain fell about her.

It was here she stayed, in her porcelain haven away from the violence, and it was here that she sobbed in relief and agony, her tears diluting the blood on her face and splashing into the bath between her legs.

Out of the frying pan.

Into the fire.

* * *

He could just do it.

He could just tighten his grip, close the spaces around his fingers and relish in how his throat snapped under the pressure. He could, he wanted to, and Davix was quite aware how he was enjoying watching this wretched little grunt squirm beneath the force, the air whistling out of his lungs as he struggle to take the air back in.  

He could kill him.

He could.

By the Spirits, he wanted to.

_He wanted to._

But it was whatever little resolve he had inside of him that prevented him from doing just that.

The rage seethed behind his eyes so fiercely he was blinded to all else around him other than the little bastard who thought he had a claim on his mate. This disgusting thing that thought he could touch her.

“ _T_ _etigit t_ _a_ _, qua mea est_ _! Mea est!”_ He screamed again, pulling his arm back and slamming the much smaller turian into the wall he held him against. His prey mewled in agony, feet scrabbling for purchase on the wall while his hands plucked weakly at Davix’s strong fingers, trying to breathe and failing.

“I didn’t know. I-I didn’t know! Hu-human. I didn’t know!” was the culprits strangled reply.

“Davix, stop! Stop it, you’re going to kill him! Stop!” Tangine, he was sure it was Tangine he could hear but he couldn’t focus on her right now. He was aware that the other one had gone, the one who had halted the attack. He should have been here, he shouldn’t have left.

He shouldn’t have left her alone.

Davix had heard Sophie screaming from the makeshift armory on the other side of the complex, had heard the offensive screech of the man attacking her which had given him cause to run back to the dwelling, Tangine and Preshura in hot pursuit.

But what made this worse was that the boy was young, no older than twenty galactic years and already his exposure to war had put him in a path of debauchery. It wasn’t uncommon for young turians to force themselves onto others, especially members of opposing races but it was a punishable behaviour, as it seemed they found it difficult to define the very thin line between what was consensual and what simply wasn’t. This young boy, the gatekeeper no less from before needed to be taught a lesson or two.

“You knew, you _knew_! You should learn to keep it sheathed lest I rip it off, force it down your throat and _watch you **choke on it**_!” He was screaming, he could feel it in his throat, could feel the angered flutter of his mandibles slapping the sides of his face, could hear the enraged roar of his subvocals forcing this boy before him to wince in fear.

“Give me a reason not to!” He slammed the boy into the wall again resulting only in a half-conscious grunt. “ _Give me a reason_!”

Tangine came again, that irritating voice of reason from the opposing side this time as she muscled her way between them.

“Commander, please, this isn’t going to solve anything, please stop! Please! Let us deal with him, you’re too important to us! Please!”

That voice of reason, his friend who was now stood between him and the boy, placed a hand on his arm, a comforting gesture that suggested she understood his predicament. And it was then that he knew she was right, he had to let him go. There were more pressing matters at hand, and becoming a murderer simply wasn’t the way to go.

Davix released him, hearing him gasp for air as he collapsed in the floor at his feet, and he glowered down at him, thinking how easy it would be to lift his boot and splatter his brains into the carpet.

How dare he touch her.

How dare he.

How dare he attempt to claim what was his.

_How dare he._

“Deal with him now, before I do,” was all Davix said, his voice a malicious growl against a clenched jaw. The next moments were a blurry misshapen mess of emotions and movement that Davix could make very little sense of as he simply stood there and attempted to take in what had happened. Before he really knew it the others had gone, taken the attacker with them, and he was left there with nothing but his fury, and Davix didn’t like being angry.

He wasn’t violent in nature, but instinct had demanded that he defend what was his, instinct had dictated that he fight, and fight was exactly what he did. He’d grabbed that boy by the collar and he’d almost killed him.

Visions of Sophie returned in a wash of regret, the way she’d choked in his hands, the bruises he’d left behind, it was enough to make him feel sick to his stomach, but he’d had to do something. He couldn’t merely do nothing. He was certain he recognised the turian who had been here, the one who had halted the onslaught, but Davix had been so blind in his rage he couldn’t quite remember anything beyond the point he’d pinned the young private against the wall.

He wasn’t sure what they would do with him, maybe they’d let him go considering he’d attacked a human, a supposed enemy, perhaps they would detain him. It wasn’t of great concern right now as reality slowly crept up on him and brought him back into the room, the slamming of his heart in his chest now calmed to a steady thrum, the only sounds in the room being that, his own breaths and the soft sound of Sophie weeping behind one of the closed doors.

Davix looked at the spot on the floor where the boy had crumpled for the longest time, listening to her crying in the other room; had he hurt her? Was she injured? He didn’t know, and he needed to. Quickly he stepped over to the door, his hand enclosing the impossibly small handle that separated him from her before the epiphany hit him and he paused.

Perhaps she wanted to be alone. Perhaps she needed this time to reflect on what happened and come to terms with it. He thought back to how his sister, his darling Florette – more a mother than a sibling – had handled his bouts of crippling unease.

She would always allow him to come to her, never the other way around.

And so he took his vigil there on the floor on the edge of the door that barricaded the room in which Sophie had found her solace for now. And he sat there and picked at a degrading piece of rubber that jutted out of the cuff of his wrist bracer, listening to her crying.

His armour, bungled together from other bits and pieces, wasn’t new but it was practical, not quite like the sheer black and red piece he wore before his capture – this one was made up of whites and blues, not exactly his best colours – but he was grateful not to be wearing nothing but a rag anymore. He finally felt a little more at ease in his own skin, even if the clothes he was wearing right now weren’t really his. It fit okay for the most part, the shoulder plates were a little stiff and his leg bracers a bit on the tight side, but overall he couldn’t complain.

He could have been sat there on the floor minutes, or even hours – it didn’t matter – but eventually the weeping stopped and Davix was alerted to movement within the room, a strange rustling that became louder until the tell-tale click of the door opening revealed a very sorry looking Sophie. She was covered in blood from a gash on her brow and her face was swollen and sore on the same side, though even from this vantage point it looked superficial, nothing a little bit of medigel couldn’t heal up.

“Hey,” he uttered, careful to keep his voice level and calm as Sophie dared to emerge further out of the room. She was wrapped in some plastic sheet, not dissimilar to the tarp he used when out in the field with her not only a few cycles ago. It was a faded yellow in colour with strange yellow animals with orange mouths dotted all over it – he would later ask Sophie what they were to be informed they were little water-floating creatures called _ducks_.

She lowered herself to her knees in front of him, still firmly wrapped in her crinkly blanket and she shuffled closer still when he offered his arms to her, pulling her so gently into his embrace. He didn’t want to hurt her further, not knowing how much damage her attacker had caused. But they sat there on the floor together, and he held her against him as the guilt began to eat away at his insides.

“I’m so sorry I left you alone,” he muttered in her hair though he wasn’t certain that she’d heard him until he felt the soft quake of her shoulders as she tightened her arms around his thin waist. He hated it when she cried, and the thought that he was partially to blame for her sorrow and her injuries only caused his guts to churn more at the sound of her.

That was before she spoke, her voice was small, frail but so forgiving Davix couldn’t help the smile that pulled at his mandibles.

“I like your clothes,” was all she said. She wanted to put it behind her, and that was okay.

It was okay because no one would get near her again.

Not while he was around.

Never again.

* * *

Davix had offered her the master bedroom of the habitat after she had showered the grime and blood from her body and he had helped her apply that marvellous medigel to her wounds. It took little over an hour for them to completely heal.

If what the turians here were saying was true then the bed hadn’t been slept in for weeks and Sophie marvelled at the still crisp silken bedsheet as she swept her fingers over it. It was cool to the touch and the faint whiff of floral detergent lingered in the air. She idly thought the smell would have dissipated long before now – seemingly not – but still she revelled in it as she closed her eyes and allowed herself to drop bodily on the bed.

She was home.

For that one moment, surrounded by the glorious smell of clean linen and freshly washed hair, Sophie was home and it felt so good to bask in the coolness of the sheets beneath her. Summer days and Saturdays swarmed in her mind, a beautiful sensation if there ever was one.

But the moment didn’t last with the thought of Davix sitting in the other room on his own. Thoughts of him were often, almost constant and much deeper now, _sensual_ , since their initial intimate encounter within the trees.

_Since the night he’d sang to her._

That kiss would linger on her lips for as long as she lived; the feel of his hard mouth against hers, the grip of his hands around her waist pulling her closer, it was all so very raw like it happened only moments ago. It didn’t matter that it was cut short, what mattered was seeded so deeply within that instant when he’d pulled her back in. When he’d all but begged her for more without so much as an uttered word between them.

Sophie rose slowly from the bed, perched on the edge of the frame in the darkness as she stared longingly at the door separating her from that only source of unadulterated desire she had ever truly felt. Before she realised it, she was already opening the door to the living quarters of the habitat and peering into the room like a child sneaking around after bedtime.

There was nothing extraordinary about what she saw. Davix was sitting on the couch looking at a data-pad in nothing but the under-suit that came with his new armour, now lying in a pile behind him on the carpeted floor. She noticed that he was rubbing his feet together which could only mean that he was comfortable. She stepped into the room, a floorboard beneath her feet creaking with her weight which caused Davix to turn his attention to her. That action alone was enough for the butterflies to swarm in her belly.

“You alright, Sophie?” was all he asked, the honey of his voice, so deep, flanged and always so gorgeous, kindled the fire burning between her legs as she stepped closer still fighting to remain casual while shoving both hands into the pale blue bathrobes pockets.

“Yeah, can’t sleep,” she lied daring to step closer still even as she watched Davix’s eyes flit over her form and darken beneath his brow. He knew she was lying, he _knew_ and yet all he did was flip the data-pad in his hand to the far side of the couch before leaning into it and slinging an arm over the back cushion – an invite to sit with him if ever she’d seen one. He said nothing, even as his amethyst gaze drifted back to meet hers. The butterflies were there again, teeming deep inside of her and she swore she could physically feel the fluttering of their tiny wings.

Sophie sat next to him, carefully parking herself not too close as to touch him accidentally but not too far away to make the interaction seem awkward on her part. There was silence at first, awkward, heavy and it hung around them thickly. But it was then that Sophie realised that maybe she was thinking a bit too hard. What she wanted wasn’t sinister, she just wanted to be with him, to be close to him, to feel his warmth surrounding her just like all of those nights spent out in the cold.

Just the two of them.

Him and her.

Together.

So, she took this opportunity by shuffling closer still and leaning her much smaller body against his, revelling in the way he wrapped his strong arm around her and pulled her closer still.

She took great pleasure in the knowledge that he wanted her there.

_He wanted her there._

She lay there against him for a while, just basking in the calm, knowing that she was safe while he was around and focusing on his thumb rubbing little circles into her hip. It was Davix that eventually broke the silence.

“Sophie?” His voice was quieter than usual which was enough to drag Sophie back into the room. She lifted her head to look at him and hummed curiously before he emitted a nervous chuckle, quickly removing his arm from around her – a motion that left her feeling cold and exposed, God how she yearned for his touch - and leaned forward, both elbows resting on parted knees.

“Nothing…” he laughed, an unhappy sound, despondent and dismissive in his delivery “… it doesn’t matter.”

But it did matter, he was holding back, of course he was, and given the way he focused his attention on the door on the far side of the room was a rather sizable hint of his embarrassment. He couldn’t even look at her.

“Tell me,” Sophie said softly, an uncertain smile tugging at a single corner of her mouth as she touched him – albeit apprehensively – on the arm. Davix didn’t flinch like she thought he would, he simply turned his head and fixed her with that beautiful amethyst gaze of his. His eyes flitted from her eyes to her mouth and back again, his mandibles lilting slowly on each side of his face before he shifted his bulk on the sofa to face her.

“Can I ask you something?” his query was laced with an ambiguity that Sophie wasn’t sure she liked and he looked at her with an intensity that had her peer at him out of the corner of her eye.

“Sure,” she replied though the fact that she had stated it like a question hadn’t passed her by.

Davix shifted again his heavy body forcing Sophie to bounce on the couch next to him, and he cleared his throat in that awkward _shy-boy_ way he did before he dared to ask his question though he lowered his gaze when he did so.

“When you look at me…” he hesitated, mandibles fluttering against his mouth before he suddenly looked up and fixed her gaze once again. “… what do you see?”

The question caught Sophie off guard, only for a second as she pondered the answer he truly wanted. Had he asked this question before and gotten the wrong response? Was this a trick or simply a man requesting validation for his terribly damaged ego? There was something deep inside herself that told her his request for this information was for none of these things.

She decided that honesty was the best course of action, knowing that _“I see a turian”_ wasn’t exactly the answer he was seeking. But she took the time to deliberate on it, to think carefully about the words say and how she would say them. She did this by shifting herself on the couch, she pulled both her legs beneath her and kneeled there in front of him.

“I see a man,” is how she began, to iterate that species was now irrelevant, that their roles in this war were blurred beyond all recognition, that he was no longer an alien to her. “And he’s a little lost, a little frightened…” she tilted her head to maintain eye contact as he sheepishly attempted to break it. The truth, sometimes, was painful. “… confused perhaps.”

She watched the plates shift over his brow, an expression she wasn’t able to read, but she continued regardless.

“I see a man,” she started again, placing a hand over his and running her thumb over the scar she had stitched together not so long ago between his knuckles, “who’s looking for the same things I am, he thinks he’s found it… am I right?”

She waited for an answer, his gaze so intense, mesmerising, before he dropped his eyes onto the space between them and she heard him hum amusedly through his nose. Sophie took that as confirmation that she was on the mark and she smiled with what little pleasure she could get from it.

A moment or two went by between them before he spoke again, though he didn’t bother to look at her this time.

“I just don’t want you to be afraid of me,” he said, so softly that Sophie could barely hear him beneath the twittering of his subharmonics deep in his chest. There was a sentiment in his words that tugged hard at Sophie’s heart. Had he gone all this time, dipped his feet into that ever-growing pool of his own emotions truly thinking that she was fearful of him?

“Why in this world would you think that?” Sophie delivered her question with a smile, she wasn’t offended that Davix would think such a thing, she did fear him greatly initially, but this soon dissipated once she’d gotten past the defensive wall he’d put up. When he’d opened his doors to her.

He looked at her for a while, unmoving until his eyes dropped to her throat. It was then that she understood, as he touched her there with his long taloned fingers. She sighed against his touch, her flesh burning beneath his hand. The bruise was fading but the area was still very tender, healing but tender.

“I’m so sorry I hurt you…” Davix’s apology cracked in his throat, and the fact that he swallowed anxiously after hadn’t gone unnoticed. It seemed his remorse from that day was as strong as it ever had been, and Sophie couldn’t deny that she’d seen it within him, had noticed it on the evening that she’d pulled him out of that rotten lake.

He’d shown his regret by not being able to look at what he’d done.

But she didn’t want his apology, she didn’t want him to cripple himself with guilt over an event that wasn’t his fault.

“Don’t be sorry, it’s okay,” she started, a mere whisper against the hum in Davix’s chest. He pulled his head back, seemingly confused by her response, but Sophie wrapped a strong hand around his wrist, preventing him from recoiling from her.

“If it had been me, I wouldn’t have hesitated, Davix. Mark my words.” She was harsh in her delivery and the way in which her turian companion stared back at her it showed that he was taken aback, shaken it seemed by her brutal confession. But he needed to hear it; had the shoe been on the other foot she would not have held back like he had that day.

“You shouldn’t feel guilt for wanting to survive,” Sophie said, softly and with the hint of a smile as she lifted her free hand and touched his face with the tips of her fingers. He seemed uncertain about her touch and she didn’t fail to notice how he attempted to pull away from her if only habitually.

“But I forgive you, I do. I forgive you.”

It was then that Davix paused, seized by a rift in time, it seemed, as he contemplated her words. Sophie wasn’t stupid, she knew what he was attempting to do. He wanted to take responsibility for what had happened, for what he’d done to her. By doing so he’d somehow hope that this would ease whatever guilt he was harbouring, to alleviate the pressure that shame weighed upon even his broad shoulders.

It wasn’t the dismissal of that initial meeting he wanted, but her forgiveness, an acceptance of that event, and the softness that returned to his eyes spoke to her more than any words or songs ever could. It was all he wanted from her and he showed this by leaning into her touch, eyes fluttering closed and pressing her hand against him with his own. The hand he’d used to touch her bruised throat had long since fallen to her lap.

A moment passed between them until Davix spoke again, his breath hot against her palm, though he didn’t open his eyes. 

“How cruel is it that we should meet this way. The spirits are taunting me,” His voice was soft, mournful, like how he used to speak back at the firesides, but the sentiment in his words tugged at her chest, those very same thoughts had ghosted through her own mind.

They would be torn apart eventually. There was no getting around it. They were doomed to be star-crossed and yet the pull towards one another had been so strong, so damn powerful that neither had put up much of a fight against it.

And that was okay.

It was okay.

Perhaps it was cruel that they should have met at all, ignorance was bliss after all. Had the humans never discovered the prothean ruins on Mars they never would have uncovered the Charon relay, and without the Charon relay Shanxi would never have been colonised, no first contact war, no turians, no suffering…

No Davix and his sweet songs and gentle touches.

That last thought was far more distressing than Sophie cared to even admit. Life was a mess at the moment, there was so very little doubt about that, a chaos of her own creation, but in the short space of time she’d known this man in front of her she came to realise that he was far more than just some passing crush.

He gave her meaning.

And she loved him, more than she’d ever loved anyone.

“If it wasn’t for this war…” she started just as Davix opened his bright eyes to look at her, “… we never would have met at all. Is that cruelty, or is it fate?”

His eyes seemed to brighten then, and he straightened himself in his seat as though to gain a better vantage point to observe her, even sitting he was still so tall. But it appeared that he didn’t have an answer for her which in turn prompted Sophie to continue.

“We’ve been through so much, in what, five days?” She chuckled softly at that, “I’ve lost count. But we know a lot about each other already, right? And I know we agreed we shouldn’t pursue anything but…”

She was going somewhere with this, and with a courage she had plucked from somewhere deep inside herself, Sophie lifted her body from the sofa. She pressed a hand against his solid chest and encouraged him to lean back into the sofa which he did without resistance though he didn’t take his eyes from her, not once. Davix watched intensely, and even offered a supporting hand against her thigh as she hooked a leg over him and straddled his thin waist.

She sat there for a moment, overwhelmed by the heat of him pressing against her with each breath he took as he gazed up at her from beneath his dark, heavy brow. Davix surrounded her, while simply sitting there beneath her, his very presence filled her from the inside out, his scent so heady, pungent clouded her senses as it always did; he smelled so strongly, like hot winter spices.

He’d touched her so deeply without touching her at all, and once more she was rushed back to beneath the waves of her subconscious. To the icy waters from which he’d saved her with the emotion of what she was about to do so intense she could swear there were black feathers sprouting around his face as the room surrounding them crumbled away from her.

There was nothing else here.

Just the two of them.

Him and her.

Together.

It was then that she realised that he was singing again, that very same song from that very night where she’d truly learned to _breathe_.

That night he’d told her he loved her.

That night she’d realised she loved him too.

And he sat there now telling her again, and again, and again so deep in that secondary voice of his rumbling in his chest that he wanted this as much as she did. Sophie could barely hear him, but she could feel him as his sweet music coursed through her body. She could feel him inside of her, in her bones, her heart, her soul.

Her mind was clouded by his desire for her, by her own desire for him as it pooled between her legs and soaked into the fabric covering Davix’s torso. But Sophie had enough about her to pull at the cord of her bath robe, the soft fabric falling away onto the floor behind her and exposing what she hid beneath. Her olive skin went cold beneath the artificial light of the room - the goose-pimples prickling at her naked flesh - but his gaze set her on fire as he allowed his gorgeous purple eyes to roam over her form.

His expression didn’t change, though the grip on her thighs tightened and his breaths came much quicker and heavier than before the moment her robe hit the floor. It hadn’t escaped her that this was probably the first time he’d ever seen a naked human, least of all one that was sitting across him in a state of arousal that was unfathomable even to her.

Her anxious fingers trailed up her belly, over her chest and shoulders until she reached her head and she twisted her hands into her hair, lifting the chocolate locks from around her neck. She was dancing, she realised, a slow, sensual demonstration of her attraction towards this avian man between her thighs and he watched her move, his eyes scanning sporadically the places of her he’d never seen before; her breasts, her stomach, her cunt before dragging his gaze back to her face. And it was only now that she noticed the colour in his throat, that deep purple flush from before that bled into his usually dark tan hide.

The sight gave her confidence that he liked what he saw, and her thoughts ghosted briefly over their conversation earlier that day. Her fierce, white hot jealousy over his and Preshura’s past, her cultural ignorance about the _gatherings_ and how turians seemingly get to know one another by fucking each other. Sophie still couldn’t comprehend this aspect of Davix’s life, but the idea that his attitude towards sex was so blasé, the idea that he had once fucked that yellow bitch who thought she would try her luck again only hours ago merely spurred her on.

“… I want to get to know you better, if you’ll let me,” she uttered, her back curved as Davix smoothed his palms over her hips, his fingers snaking upwards to her waist. He leaned towards her, his purrs reverberating deep in his chest, and he inhaled deeply as he drew closer still, his strong hands pulling her towards him. His touch sent a tremor through her, his enormous bare hands against her naked flesh setting her body alight, that she arched into him, their bodies flush as his fingers snaked across her back, his sharp talons grazing so deliciously against her skin.

“I want that too,” he responded huskily, his main voice a mere breath as his sub-harmonics whined and twittered deep in his throat.

Davix leaned in, nuzzling her neck before she felt the wet heat of his tongue lap at her throat coupled with that deep rumbling purr from within him. Sophie sighed hotly, rolling her head on her shoulders, the pressure building like a sprung coil ever tightening deep in her core.

“You should just take me back to Palaven with you,” Sophie breathed lustily, a grin pulling at the corner of her mouth when Davix adjusted himself beneath her with a hard roll of his pelvis and nipped at her neck. “Keep me as your pet.”

She was teasing, of course, a play on words originally delivered by Torque, but the pillow talk didn’t resonate with her partner as she thought it might. Davix was one who quite liked innuendo and it hadn’t gone unnoticed that he enjoyed talking dirty from time to time even if the moment was inappropriate. But his reaction wasn’t what Sophie had expected.

He pulled away, not sharply, but enough for her to notice that he either didn’t get the joke or was feeling a tad uncomfortable. And he looked at her oddly. His pupils were blown wide in lust as his amethyst gaze flitted about her face, but there was something about his expression that didn’t sit well with her.

“What?” she started, lifting a shoulder coyly and tracing a single finger against the hard ridge of his keel. “Don’t you want to play with me?”

Davix didn’t hesitate with his answer and responded with a simple. “No.”

Sophie was taken aback initially as a chill sank into her skin at his response. It seemed strange that they had gotten this far, that she was sitting naked on his lap, offering herself to him on a platter for him to suddenly retract. Perhaps he was having second thoughts about this cross-species liaison, perhaps it was a bad idea to want something more than they had. But Sophie’s fears were dashed the moment he rose to his feet, carrying her with him and seated her on the coffee table just in front of the couch.

Parting her legs with his palms on her knees, Davix rolled his pelvis against her with a low rumbling growl, the fabric of his under-suit rough on her womanhood coupled with the chill of the metal zipper between his legs against her clit. A soft breath escaped her in the form of his name and she responded to his action with an eager arch of her back pressing herself into him, his heat and forcing him to feel hers as it soaked through the hard cloth concealing him from her. It felt so good to know that he wanted her, wanted to fuck her as much as she wanted him, had wanted him so desperately for days now.

“I want to be one with you,” he breathed, the harmonics in his chest twittering as they always did now when he spoke to her. “I want to mate with you, for you to be mine…” Davix paused, his eyes falling to her lips for only a moment until his gaze reconnected with hers as he combed his long fingers through her now soft, silky hair. “… But mostly, I want to be yours, _por mea corda_.”

His gaze was so intense she almost feared she would drown in his eyes and yet she couldn’t look away. She didn’t want to look away, he’d stolen her soul, her heart, _everything_ and he damn well knew it. Sophie lifted her hands and cupped his face, revelling in the way he leaned into her touch and closed his eyes so slowly as he did so.

This was more than just sex to him. This wasn’t one of his little _gatherings_ , or a game, he was done playing. He was seeking something much more from her; peace, acceptance a chance to finally belong, _unity_.

He wanted to _love_ her, as the person, the _woman_ she was. Not as a thing he could hang from his arm, not a conquest, a notch on his hypothetical bedpost. Sophie surprised herself as the thought that she wanted the same, everything that he’d just said, swept over her. Davix wasn’t a mere crush she wanted to get beneath, she was reaching out for all that he was, and she _wanted_ it all. But more than that, she was willing to simply hand herself over to him.

She wanted to be _his_.

“Then take it,” her whisper a simple thrum against the intensity that brewed between them and the room seemed to the brighten the moment he opened he eyes, to look at her as though seeking confirmation for the words she’d just breathed.

She would not deny him.

“I’m yours, take it all.”


	10. When Stars Collide

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Loooots of sexy times in this chapter. Just so you know ;)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Tae Amo: Palaveni for I love you
> 
> Por Mea Corda: A term of endearment usually reserved for significant others/spouses.
> 
> Amicae: the turian version of a significant other.

She’d done it.

She’d given herself over to him, not as a _pet_ , a thing to be owned, but as his partner, lover, _amicae_.

There was a moment of contemplation from Davix, as he absorbed the information as little as it was until he planted a single hand on the table between her legs and hoisted himself towards her. He was purring again, that deep guttural rumble that vibrated out of him and reverberated into her, as he nuzzled her brow with his own, marking her, claiming her as his own – she understood this now, what it meant to belong, and she was almost convinced she could smell him on her skin.

Sophie lifted her hands and pressed her fingers onto the prongs of his mandibles, delicately rubbing them from the base upwards and back again - a turian’s kiss.

“I feel like you were made for me,” he whispered hotly, the plates on either side of his face lifting so slowly in response to her touch and his breath so sweet like summer berries on a hot day while those sub-harmonics sang in his chest as loud as they ever were. She could feel him more than she could hear him. His song coursed through her so deeply that she could feel him, his music, in her blood.

“Maybe I was,” Sophie replied softly with a grin before lifting her head and placing a simple kiss on the hard ridge of his mouth while using a single hand to begin unzipping the under-suit he wore. He responded immediately, eyes fluttering closed accompanied by a low guttural moan that rumbled from the base of his throat. Her kiss was fleeting yet there was a sense of satisfaction that came with Davix as he leaned towards her when she gently pulled away, reluctant to relinquish the contact.

“I thought you’d like your women a bit… harder and spikier though,” she teased.

“Until I met you…” Davix started daring to shift a little closer after unhooking both shoulders from his suit, the garment now hanging at the waist, and forcing Sophie to lie on her back - just the sheer thought of this man laying between her legs was almost enough for her to lose her mind. “…I didn’t think I had a preference.”

He lifted a single hand between them and traced a taloned finger from the base of her throat slowly down between the valley of her breasts, over her stomach until he reached her navel. His touch was molten against her skin and she couldn’t help but arch her back into him in a silent plea for more, the coil embedded deep inside of her tightened, forcing that white-hot amorous heat to pool between her legs.

“ _Hard and spikey_ just doesn’t do it for me. Not anymore.” He smiled at her then, the flare of both mandibles as the chuckle left him told her the grin was a filthy one.  

“That’s good to know,” Sophie grinned back, feeling herself smouldering beneath him as she sat up and pushed him back from the table with the flat of her palm again his chest. Davix relented without protest, the fabric of his under-suit slipping open at his belly as the zipper gave way to the strain of his motions. With the curve of his back against the foot of the couch behind them, Sophie lay flush against him, her lips greeting his mouth as their tongues clashed in another approximation of what could be a human’s kiss, the heat of his hands squeezing her rear sending those tremors up her spine once more.

God, she loved it when he touched her, when he kissed her, when he moaned into her mouth, when he sighed her name. No other man had ever made her feel so amorous, so damn hot, so fucking thirsty for more.

She was parched and _starving_ for him, his touch, his body. All of him, everything that he was.

_And he tasted like cream soda._

She sucked lightly on his tongue before pulling away only momentarily to trail her butterfly kisses over his lower-mandible and along his jaw line to reach the hide of his throat taking pleasure in the fact that he tilted his head to allow her access. Sophie paused there, spying the scar - still blue and sore, still healing - where he had taken a bullet there for her, nearly _died_ for her. She touched the puckered flesh delicately with the tips of her fingers noting how the mottled skin shifted over the tension of tender muscles beneath, how his purrs intensified and his grip around her waist tightened the moment she’d touched him.

Sophie was lost then, deep in the sentimentality behind that scar, knowing that he would have to live with it for the rest of his life, even if this moment they shared right now was only momentary, if this was all they had or ever likely to have.

She would savour it; this one moment they’d stolen.

Just him and her.

_Together._

And she kissed his scar so softly, his flesh so hot against her lips, feeling his body rise against hers as he took in a single gasping breath in response. Perhaps the wound hurt him still, but he didn’t complain and merely flexed his grip around her before she began to shift her body downwards. Sophie allowed her hands to explore him, the rough charcoal plates that littered his torso, cool to the touch against the heat of his flushed hide, her fingers slipping between the gaps and stroking the scaly, sensitive skin beneath his natural armour, trailing hot kisses in her touches wake.

He was a dragon if she’d ever seen one.

Davix watched her go, leaning back on a single hand while his other played with her hair, twisting it delicately between his long fingers seemingly enamoured by the sight of her. He parted his powerful thighs wide to allow her to sit and Sophie kneeled on the carpet between them, the fibres rough against her knees as she smoothed her hands over the valley of Davix’s groin. He whined needily as she did so, before she reached for the zipper tentatively holding the fabric in place to barely conceal whatever it was he had there between his legs.

She pulled the zipper downwards to reveal his pelvic plates already noting that the flesh there sheathing his manhood was engorged – swollen and deep purple in colour - and ready to release him from his depths, clear fluid beading at his slit. He was holding back. Sophie trailed a single finger along the flesh, her skin cool against the searing heat she could feel radiating from his hide – he was so soft, like silk unlike the rest of him beneath her fingertips - and she felt the plates shift below her palm as Davix groaned deep in his throat and arched into her hand.

“Sophie… Please.” He was breathless, panting in desire but his voice was enough to have her look up, her eyes connecting with his, heavy lidded and glazed with lust as he looked back at her amorously. Sophie didn’t answer - not verbally - and instead shot him a dark smile before she placed both hands on each thigh, parting his legs more so, and running her tongue over the long slit of Davix’s sheath, lapping up the substance leaking from within. He tasted so distinctly of cloves; spicy, delicious, and he responded immediately, his entire body snapping rigid as he attempted to push himself further into her mouth, long fingers knotting tightly into her hair.

“S-Sophie! Fuck…! Oh f-fuck!”

Davix’s cry was strained by his own choked gasp as he seemingly forgot how to breathe, and Sophie opened her eyes from there on the floor, but she couldn’t see his face. Davix had thrown his head back, mandibles spread wide and his chest heaving as she dipped her tongue back into him, relishing in that deep guttural moan of her name escaping his throat and the tip of his cock emerging from within.

She had seen enough turians in her line of work to know their anatomy well, but she had no idea a turian’s hide could be so sensitive to the touch. It was a beautiful sight to see Davix - as big as he was, so physically strong, regal and gorgeous - lose himself to her ministrations, to allow himself this pleasure she was gifting to him. And it was even more beautiful to hear that he was enjoying it.

“Don’t stop. Spirits! Spirits, yes, _yes,_ don’t stop…” he gasped, his hands entwined in Sophie’s hair massaging her scalp to encouraging her to continue with her sweet torture coupled with the steady rhythmic roll of his pelvis against her mouth.

Sophie sealed her lips around his genital opening while she sucked gently on the tip of his cock that was still growing – rapidly - and filling her mouth. She pulled away eventually, his dick leaving her lips with a wet pop and springing back as she sat and marvelled wide eyed at this strange thing that was Davix’s manhood.

It was amusing to think that sometimes she forgot that this guy was an alien to her.

He was a _little_ bigger than what she’d expected, though if truth be told she wasn’t certain of what she had been expecting at all. She’d seen a turian’s penis before but not in the same sense. Those small shrivelled things she’d cut away from her specimens had been what she’d assumed as a strange sort of cloaca found in most avian species on earth. It was the discovery of a separate intestinal tract in the males and a vaginal opening in the females which forced Sophie to assume that turians copulated much the same as humans did.

Davix was proof of this if nothing else.

But still, what she was looking at here didn’t match what she had studied in her lab. As per usual, Davix just _had_ to be different. He was long, curved and thick, a good ten or twelve inches without the aid of a measuring device and in the place of the stiff ridges found on her specimens, Davix had three long finger like barbs jutting out of the shaft. She touched one of them to discover that these barbs were not hard or sharp but flexible, almost rubbery and seemingly quite sensitive given how he flinched and whimpered at the contact.

She pulled her lower lip between her teeth as she examined him, marvelling at just how pretty he was down here, and she found herself almost envying the past lovers he’d claimed to have had. The sight of such things usually made her cringe, a pleasant surprise it was that she was turned on by the sight of him.

Her eyes darted to his face, to see that he was watching her again the anticipation of what she would do next hanging in his amethyst gaze as she pulled him so slowly back into her mouth.

* * *

Watching her - this gorgeous apparition of beauty, a sexual deity made physical and kneeling there between his legs - swallow his cock was by far the sexiest thing Davix had ever seen. Needless to say that the sensation of her hot wet lips slipping over his manhood was almost enough to make him lose his mind - though Davix was pretty certain he was quite close to the pinnacle of insanity anyway - as he watched himself sink back into her mouth, her tongue flexing so lusciously against the underside of his shaft.

She couldn’t fit him into her mouth in his entirety and what was left she squeezed gently with both hands, her soft, supple skin gliding over his wet cock so deliciously, if he closed his eyes he could swear she was actually fucking him, his thick knot slipping so deep inside of her. When she raised her head - her eyes watching him emerge from her mouth - she lapped hungrily at the tip with her soft, pink tongue. He could hear himself whining greedily with each motion she made, and he gasped her name each time she sucked him back in. Her eyes drank him up as he crumbled beneath her, the once shocking blue of her gaze now darkened with desire. A desire she harboured for him – an expression he had never seen from anyone before.

But he was getting close, with each lick of her tongue, each gentle squeeze of her hands around him, each hot wet slurp of her lips, he was getting closer to that inevitable edge. Davix didn’t want this to end so soon, so it was with the gentle tug of her hair that he coaxed her away from him and she sat up to gaze back at him quizzically.

“What’s wrong?” her query laced with a misplaced concern as Davix sat there beneath her, fighting for composure, eyes squeezed closed and his mind racing over the most mundane things just to make sure that this moment wasn’t over sooner than it had begun; those engine parts he’d forgotten to order before leaving Cipritine, the way he’d feel his soul leave his body in a cold shower, that one time he’d fell up the stairway in the Primarch’s tower and embarrassed himself with that high pitched squeal of his. None of it truly worked and he was still greeted with her when he opened his eyes.

Spirits, she was gorgeous.

Simply gorgeous.

“You’re too good at that,” he heard himself pant between breaths, but it was her chuckle – a sound of satisfaction if he’d ever heard one, in response that had him sit up and look at her. And it was then, as she sat there between his legs, that he saw how much she glowed. Delicious auburn hair tumbled over her shoulders, framing her face as her eyes smouldered hungrily beneath. Her skin was the colour of expensive brandy as it practically shimmered in the artificial light, and the rise and fall of her breasts with every breath she took was mesmerising.

He’d seen plenty of material on the mating rituals of the Asari to know what he was looking at – though truth be told he wasn’t certain what he was supposed to do with it, though he guessed it was going to be fun finding out - and it went without saying that Sophie, this phantom of loveliness was far more striking and moreish than any asari he’d ever laid eyes on.

A deity if he’d ever seen one.

And he could smell her, not that typical bodily odour that identified her, but the arousal that pooled between her legs. A powerful aroma, spicy, heady and all-consuming in this alien room. But it was more than that, it was knowing that her arousal was for him, for what he was and what he had to offer.

Incredible.

She smelled incredible.

This woman sat before him was so very different from the one he’d spent the best part of five cycles slowly falling in love with. She was the same; strong and intelligent, but so very different; confident and sexy, and he wanted her, to keep her, fuck her, love her for all she was with everything he had.

And she wanted him in kind, like no one had ever done before.

Davix rocked into her hands, gently as she touched him so intimately, the embers of that once raging fire deep in his groin beginning to flare once again at her ministrations. But even then, watching her stroking his manhood, she was too far away.

“Kiss me how you do?” he asked in little more than a breath, a breath that was all he could manage. Sophie didn’t hesitate, and she crawled from that space between his legs, over his chest so she could run her soft pink tongue over the shell of his mouth. He didn’t deny her, parting his mouth plates their tongues met and he felt her body melt into him as he kissed her as best he could. He guided her hands then to the small soft patch of skin beneath his fringe, her fingers, small and deft left to massage him there and forcing an amorous growl to leave his chest.

“Not here,” Sophie whispered eventually, her eyes still so blue, so deep like the rivers of Cipritine but dark and stormy with desire, the smile curling at one corner of her pretty little mouth. Davix didn’t speak but merely responded with quizzical trill.

“You should take me to bed,” she responded huskily motioning with a flick of her hair towards the door she had not long emerged from, her voice little more than a thrum against the harmonics buzzing in his chest.

Needless to say that Davix didn’t need asking twice and after kicking off the remnants of his undersuit he curled his hands around her and lifted her from the floor, her arms wrapped firmly around his neck. There was little doubt about it, she was made for him, forged in stardust deep within the fires of Trebia herself.

* * *

The room was as she had left it; dark if not for the dusky golden glow from the small lamp on the end table. It set the mood; amorous, _sexy_ , the perfect ambience for love making, if that was what they would be doing this evening.

How was there any doubt in Sophie’s mind that they would be doing anything else? Her heart raced excitedly with the prospect, not just that she would soon be entwined intimately with a turian, but the fact that this was unquestionably a first for the both of them in more ways than just the physical.

They had both partaken in the carnal pleasures that came with an intimate partner and had suffered for it in their own unique way. Davix had been right in what he’d said earlier that evening, that there was an emptiness that came with sex with no passion, no feeling, no _strings,_ as they say. An emptiness that lingered and manifested into a sense of loathing and self-depreciation that Sophie had always struggled to identify – until now.

Sex had always been a chore with James; a means to an end, a method of simply getting him off her back for an evening, even when she denied him he had his way - those nights were the worst. Sophie had always been lead to believe that sex was supposed to be something fundamentally beautiful between a person and their chosen partner. She had never experienced that, had never wanted it and always felt dirty and used after the fact. So filthy that no amount of scrubbing at her flesh until it was raw and bleeding could disperse the grime James left on her skin.

Together as they were, for she and Davix, there was hope that this experience would open their eyes to one another and the emotions they had started sharing only a few days ago. The time of these feelings manifesting had been transient, and there was little doubt in Sophie’s mind that their coupling would be fleeting at best, but she’d never wanted something more than she wanted Davix; this kind, gentle soul embodied in the shell of a giant. Not an alien, but a man she could happily spend the rest of her living days with, a man who treated her as an equal, a man who loved her for the woman she was.

Her body burned for him, insatiable in her need to feel him inside of her.

As Davix carried her towards the bed their eyes met, a connection between two kindred spirits, a melding of souls which caused Sophie’s thoughts to ghost over their initial meet. How different would things have been had Richard not been there, how would their relationship have evolved and flourished were it not for the horrors they’d encountered? But that wasn’t all they had, surely not.

Gazing into those soft, amethyst eyes as he lowered her body to lay amongst the silk, she saw the want within them, a deep-rooted desire he’d cultivated and nurtured for her and the song that rumbled from so deep within him, echoed in her bones. Again, he was able to touch her so strongly, so intimately without touching her at all.

Her one.

Her love.

Her _songbird_.

And yet, he was hesitating. She could sense his uncertainty so strongly Sophie habitually raised a hand and placed it so carefully on the side of his face, which would have been a human’s cheek, the mandible plate there flexing beneath her palm.

Sophie didn’t ask the question, her smile, small and encouraging, spoke for her which only had Davix lean into her touch as he had done out in the sitting room and he looked at her like she was the only woman he had ever seen.

“Are you sure…?” he was whispering, and yet all his question did, his request to proceed, to truly claim her, was widen the smile already tugging at her lips. He spoke like there was no turning back, there was little doubt that there actually was.

They’d reached that point of no return long ago.

Sophie raised her other hand, her palms framing his face so perfectly as she allowed her thumbs to stroke the shell along each mandible. Not rough to the touch, soft like fine velvet.

“There was only one other before you, no one else…” she was whispering too, taking care to read Davix’s eyes as the plates shifted and altered his expression beyond her own understanding. But he needed to know how much this meant, he needed to know that this wasn’t some one-night stand, another one of his gatherings.

It was so much more than just that.

 _He_ meant so much more than just that.

“… it’s always been you, Davix Fedorian,” Sophie finished with a chuckle, a soft breath through her nostrils as she observed the widening of his bright purple eyes that practically glowed in the artificial light of the end-table lamp. She was so sure they were meant to meet that day at Mt.Myka, that destiny pit them against one another for this inevitable end as he crouched there between her legs. She was not his prisoner, and he not her captor.

They were soul mates, doomed to be star-crossed but to hell with the consequences, to hell with the opinionated bigots at headquarters, to hell with them all. They were there together just him and her and nothing else in the entire galaxy mattered at that moment, nothing beyond what she could see in front of her.

Her one.

Her love.

 _Amicae_.

“It’s _always_ been you.”

There was only a moment of consideration from Davix, his wide eyes softening once more as he once again allowed them to rove over her form before dragging his gaze back to her face.

“How are you so fucking perfect?” he uttered as he leaned towards her.

The space closed between them as she allowed her hands to snake around his neck, both of them seeking the warmth of the other as their mouths met and his arms encircled her much smaller frame. She heard him moan deep in his chest, a low guttural growl that only flared those embers already burning in the pit of her belly. His tongue slipped over hers into her mouth, so hot, so sweet, _like cream soda_ , and his hands smoothed over her skin finding the jut of each hip making her gasp his name against the hard ridge of his mouth.

Sophie arched into him, her legs slotted perfectly against each hip spur, as he trailed those ice-cold talons over her hot flesh, his cock slipping between the lips of her already soaked centre. She spied his manhood emerge from between her legs, clear fluid already beading at the tip before he pulled himself back with a roll of his pelvis. Her reaction to his touch seemed to be an opportunity for Davix to shift, his hard nose nuzzling her neck through her hair before she felt that distinctive hot wetness of his tongue lapping at her throat.

“Say it again,” she heard him growl, his hips grinding against hers and pushing his dick through her slick folds once more. She could feel those long barbs tease at her entrance with each deliberate thrust forcing that already tightly wound coil deep in her core to tighten further still. She couldn’t think, she couldn’t breathe, her mind fogged with an impenetrable euphoria she had never felt before.

Sophie wondered only briefly what she had gotten herself into, if she was truly in her right mind to allow this man, this turian, this _alien,_ to touch her in such a way. But her desire for him, her unadulterated _aching_ hunger she had for him forbade the thought to take fruition. He pulled her closer still, her head lolling back on her shoulders and allowing her hair to cascade to the sheets beneath. His hands were everywhere, his tongue, long, hot, wet and impossibly blue wound around her like a living rope, his breath, heady like hot summer berries filled her head as he pushed her closer to the brink with little more than the hard roll of his pelvis against hers.

He thrust again, her body quivering with the pleasure of his cock against her sex and setting her entire body aflame.

“My name. Say it again!” His voice, flanged, deep and oh so gorgeous, was more urgent now, less a request than it was a demand for him to hear his name from her lips and she wouldn’t deny him, she had no power to deny him.

“Davix,” she gasped, as he continued to tease her, so close to penetrating her, to sinking so deep into her hot, soaking depths and yet not but she was so close already, so close that his name came again, and that deep gravelly snarl rumbled out of him as she all but melted in his arms.

“Inside… please… I-I can’t…” She couldn’t speak, her mouth simply unable to formulate words as she knew them, and with every roll of his hips she was edging ever closer to that inevitable end. Sophie couldn’t handle much more, she wanted him inside of her, _needed_ him inside of her to make her finally feel what it was to make love, to be fucked so good by someone who truly wanted her, mind, body and soul. But she was helpless to resist, her legs aiding to pivot her hips and grind her cunt against his gorgeous alien dick, those flexible prongs teasing her sopping wet centre. He was torturing her in the most delicious way and she couldn’t help digging her blunt nails into his keel as he held her there against him, her body practically hovering above the bed.

“Come if you want,” he responded, his voice almost drowning in the harmonics of his secondary voice, a mere thrum against the intensity that boiled in the room. He looked at her amorously, his bright purple eyes falling to her chest as her breasts bounced with every thrust, and raising again to meet with her gaze, mandibles flared wide in an unmistakable grin and that flush of deep plum seeping into the hide around his throat.

“I-inside, Dav-Davix, please! Fuck me good, fuck me _so_ good, Davix, please, _please_ ,” she begged, whimpering with tears in her eyes in her desperation to just feel him fucking her, her body molten, hips writhing against his sweet, _sweet_ torment, she was so close, _so close_ , and her desire to taste every drop of him had never been stronger.

She was so thirsty.

 _So thirsty_.

“Come for me first,” he replied, his voice low, husky, _dangerous_ as he curled his body over hers, not relenting in his slow, deliberate drive of his hips against hers, his thick cock slipping between her folds so deliciously and she cried out each time. But it was his voice now, coupled with his motions, forced the fire to flare even more.

“I bet you look gorgeous when you come.”

He was whispering in her ear - sweet, filthy nothings - his breath once again filling her head, making her dizzy with untainted desire. She couldn’t take much more, she was losing her mind.

“Da-Davix…!”

He was panting in time with her, his breath hot against her face.

“Come for me, Sophie.”

And she was so close.

“Davix, _please_!”

So close.

“Come for me.”

It hit her suddenly as that tightly wound coil deep in her core sprung open and time itself ceased to exist. The orgasm washed over her like a wave, her mouth dropping open in a silent cry as the pleasure coursed through her in sharp electrical pulses. And Davix held her against him and watched her come undone in his arms, her legs squeezing his torso and her back arched so much so her head almost touched the sheets beneath. She was gripping his biceps so hard she would later wonder how she didn’t draw blood.

It was like nothing she’d ever felt before, so good, so damn good that she swore she was dying.

Her body jolted only twice more as the ecstasy subsided, the heat generated by her euphoria replaced by a cold chill as her muscles relaxed and she felt her entire body give way and collapse from within.

It took a moment to realise that even though her legs were still wrapped around her lover’s waist, Davix had managed to gently lay her back on the silken sheets of the bed. And there she lay, dragging air into lungs as she re-educated her sated body in the art of breathing.

But Davix wasn’t done with her yet.

He waited for her to come around from her stupor, her mind still addled, still foggy, but aware enough to respond to his touch against her sensitive albeit chilly skin. He grasped her by the waist lifting her lower body further away from the bed and readjusting his legs beneath her. Sophie hadn’t the strength to move much, still panting from her ordeal and reeling from the experience.

He entered her then, slowly, deliberately and he stretched her so deliciously from within, that rumbling purr deep in his chest intensifying the deeper he sank. He was enormous through and through and she pondered momentarily if he would even fit but sheathed to the hilt they lay there connected at the hips as Davix seemed to come to terms with being inside of her. She realised then as she watched her lover quivering before her, his hands on her hips flexing in anticipation, why he needed her so damn wet.

“You’re so tight, fuck. _Fuck_ , Sophie,” he whined, and she was certain she heard him cough as he spoke.

“Is that bad…?” she mused aloud to be greeted with a soft chuckle and those gorgeous purple eyes gazing at her like she was the only thing that existed in this world.

“Incredible…” he started, daring to pull out a fraction before slowly sinking back in with a low pleasured sigh. “… spirits, you feel incredible.”

The fire had returned, burning in her loins as Davix pushed himself ever deeper into her depths, his head rolled to one side and his mouth parted, mandibles flared, as he steadily increased his tempo. She listened to him whine, and twitter in his throat occasionally hearing her name on the winds of his main voice and Sophie could swear that it was the most beautiful thing she had ever heard as he filled her so completely.

“ _You’re_ incredible,” Sophie whimpered in return, her back arching as he drove himself into her, so slowly and she could feel every inch of him until he could go no further. She was losing herself again, losing herself within him, within the sensation of sex with him, feeling the plates of his torso drag over the skin of her inner thighs, a sensation that had never felt so good.

“Oh, Davix,” she sang to him, flinging both arms behind her head and lifting her shoulders if only to feel his thick cock that little bit deeper inside of her. “God, you weren’t lying when you said you knew how to fuck.”

She heard him laugh then, a hearty sound that almost broke the moment, almost but not quite as he curled his body around her once more, their brows touching as he used a single hand to lift her rump a little higher and the other to pin her hands to the bed.

He was getting faster, his pelvis slammed into her causing her body to almost leave the mattress, forcing her to cry out each time they connected and the headboard to bang relentlessly against the wall. He was panting, his tongue lolling out of his mouth, yet he never once took his eyes from her, but his expression had changed. His eyes were glassy, glazed over and it was then that she realised how close he was, but then again so was she, that coil ever winding deep in the pit of her belly as she watched this beautiful creature make love to her.

“Tae amo, tae amo, Sophie, _tae amo,_ ” he panted, his voice strained and desperate in that strange tongue she’d heard him use three times now, and yet strangely, despite her decoders inability to translate it for her she knew what he was saying purely from the sweet inviting song he was singing deep in his chest. He was confessing to her again, of that deep saturated love he sang about back at the over hang.

Her one.

Her love.

Her _songbird._

_Tae amo._

_I love you._

She was close again, so close and he thrust into her only twice more, long, slow and oh so deep that she felt that sweet wave of satisfaction sweep over her once more feeling Davix’s cock pulse inside of her as he released himself deep within with a low jaw clenching growl.

Davix released her hands then, gasping for breath, his manhood slipping out of her as he moved, and he motioned almost instantly to leave as he staggered from the bed on legs he didn’t seem to know how to use. His sudden withdrawal took Sophie by surprise to say the least and it took all the strength she had to push herself up from the sheets.

“Where are you going?” she asked, a little hurt that he had retracted so suddenly and still a little breathless, feeling Davix’s fluids dribbling down the inside of her thigh.

He turned and fixed her with a quizzical glare that Sophie struggled to understand initially until the pieces finally slotted together so perfectly; and the realisation hurt her in places she didn’t know existed.

This was normal for him; to do the deed and remove himself from the receiving party. So sad was it that simple intimacy was such a foreign concept for Davix and that the blowout from their shared moment had sent him into an instinctual overdrive. He didn’t _want_ to leave, he simply assumed that he should.

Sophie reached for him then with outstretched arms, rolling her hands inwards to beckon him closer, which he responded to instantly and perched himself back on the edge of the bed, leaning bodily towards her. Sophie closed the space between them, allowing the remanence of their coupling to pool on the sheets between her legs as she cupped her turian lover’s face in her hands.

“You can’t make me feel so beautiful and then leave me out in the cold,” she soothed kindly and not without a warm smile which he returned with a tilt of his head and the flare of both mandibles. He seemed grateful that she had called him back into the room.

“I just thought…” he started, interrupted by the tips of her fingers against his mouth plates and soft ‘shush’ from between her lips. She already knew what he was going to say, she knew how cruel his past lovers had been, she didn’t need to hear it all again.

“I’m not like them. _This_ is real,” Sophie whispered, taking care to look him in the eye as she spoke, and he looked back at her for the longest time, processing what had just happened, and how Sophie was yet again forcing a change in his behaviour. A change for the better, she hoped. Davix nodded eventually coupled with a rumble of agreement, both mandibles flexing beneath her palms in what she could only assume was a faint smile.

“Won’t you stay and keep me warm? Please?” She asked him this in little more than a murmur as she lifted herself from the bed, nuzzled his neck and allowed her hands to smooth over his bare chest. She allowed her body to lie flush with his, a satisfied sigh escaping her was his heat melted into her, her sanctuary within the chaos of her life.

“Of course I will, _por mea corda_ ,” she heard him reply, his voice, so deep, flanged and oh so gorgeous sending a ripple through her body at the mere sound of him, so sultry, so sexy.

She felt the heat of his body encircle her as sleep began to takeover and all she could smell, all she could feel was him. She ached all over, could still feel Davix filling her so thoroughly, her hips sore, the flesh between her thighs raw and her throat coarse but in the most satisfying way. There was no one else out there for her, something this pure, this beautiful as her love for him, for each other… how could it be so wrong?

It couldn’t.

Running away with him was a prospect that became more appealing the longer she was with him. She could make him her everything.

Her one.

Her love.

 “Thank you, my _songbird_.”

* * *

The nights here on Shanxi were always cold. Even the flames from the camp fires weren’t enough to quell the chill that settled into his bones. But tonight was different. Deep in the sanctuary of this old human habitat, and the soft silken linen of the sheets beneath them, it was any wonder that Davix could even remember the mere notion of comfort.

A human’s bed was not like what he was used to back home, the concept was close yet had he fallen asleep on this thing he was lying on now he would probably be on the floor before the end of his sleep cycle. But none of that really mattered, at least not right now as he lay curled around the one and only thing that mattered at all.

Something extraordinary had happened this evening, and it went far beyond the mere concept of sex, beyond and further as Davix lay there and watched Sophie sleeping beneath the sheets right next to him. She had confessed earlier to mating with only two people in her life; her vile ex-mate who believed he had some right to abuse her when he didn’t get what he wanted, and himself only a couple of hours ago.

Humans had a very strange outlook on sex; where it was a mere social activity for a turian, for a human the act was something far more special than just that, almost sacred it seemed. For Sophie, at least, it was the epitome of ultimate trust of her body and her emotions, and the fact that she trusted him enough with both to allow him to be so intimately close to her was a feeling Davix was certain he would never forget.

It was with this thought in mind, that he dared to lean a little closer, and brush his nose against her brow, to take in her scent as it was now. The distinct aroma of lovemaking still clung to her skin; aromatic and sweet, but mostly it was him he could smell, and he would be lying to himself if he tried to deny how much pleasure he took in this fact. That the small thing lying beside him, this strong little human who he’d fallen so desperately for, was finally his. He’d never been allowed so close to a partner after the deed to enjoy these instances, and he’d tried to leave after the fact with her, but Sophie had insisted that he stay and in doing so he had sacrificed his need to sleep, his consciousness so enthralled, intoxicated by her and his love for her.

Time was so precious now, more so than it ever was and Davix was afraid he would miss something if he so much as blinked. How could he sleep when he could be looking at her instead?

He breathed deeply again, against her hair this time, eyes fluttered closed and he relished how she filled his being so thoroughly until she murmured dreamily and woke steadily next to him.

“Sorry,” he uttered, careful not to allow his voice to unsettle the comfortable night time silence he had been enjoying for these past few stolen moments, “I didn’t mean to wake you.”

He could barely see her in the sheer black of the room, but the glint of her eyes in what little light was present was enough for him to see that she was looking at him.

“You alright, Sophie?” He asked, still careful to keep his voice low, afraid that he would somehow spoil the ambience in the room.

There was a moment of quiet between them as Sophie seemed to process his question until she eventually shuffled towards him, her hand lightly touching his shoulder.

“I want to tell you something, but I’m not sure I should,” she murmured, her eyes twinkling in the darkness as she looked up at him.

“Well, you’ve started now so you may as well just tell me, hm?”

She lowered her gaze momentarily, hesitant to continue, it seemed, before she shuffled a little closer still and he curled his body around her almost habitually.

“You’ve told me before how ugly you think you are,” she said softly, her voice was not unkind but Davix had to admit that he wasn’t sure he liked her bringing up his crippling insecurities. Still he refrained to answer until Sophie’s whisper ghosted against his aural canal, her breath hot against his hide. “It hurts me to know you can’t see how beautiful you are.”

Davix had been called many things in his lifetime, _beautiful_ certainly wasn’t one of them and in that instance, he was almost convinced that the woman tenderly kissing his neck was actually drunk. Not that it mattered, he was enjoying the attention and he could feel the arousal begin to writhe deep in his belly with each gentle touch of her body against his.

“Which bits?” he asked huskily, leaning back on both hands and tilting his head back, revelling in Sophie’s fluttering lips against his skin, the heat of her tongue wet against his skin.

Sophie pulled away then and answered with a simple yet lightly astonished, “all of you” as though she couldn’t quite believe that he had even asked at all.

Davix couldn’t help the disgruntled whimper that left his throat when she broke contact there was never enough of her, never enough.

She turned her back on him, pulling at his arm gently to entice him to drape it over her shoulder as she leaned her back comfortably against his chest and stroked her palm over the scales on the back of his large hand.

“There’s a story where I’m from, it’s old, so old, but it was always a favourite of mine when I was a kid,” she started softly while she played gently with his three-digit hand, weaving her fingers around his. Humans had far too many fingers.

Davix trilled deep in his chest to entice her to continue.

“It’s about a prince, and he and his servants are cursed by a witch for his arrogance and his inability to love. The curse turned his servants into inanimate objects; the maids were feather dusters, the butler was a clock, the cook a teapot. I loved the little teacup. He was my favourite.” She chuckled, a childish noise which caused Davix’s mandibles to flare with a grin as Sophie readjusted herself against him. There was something so very satisfying about hearing that smile in her voice. Though was it a vid she was describing or a book? Davix wasn’t certain but he was sure she was going somewhere with what she was saying, the least he could do was listen.

“The prince was turned into a beast. Like, he wasn’t a particular animal, more an amalgam of different things merged into one. He was supposed to be so ugly, so grotesque that he was feared throughout the kingdom. He and those who worked for him were doomed to perish as cursed objects within the castle because the prince was too proud a man to seek a cure.”

“There’s a cure for being an asshole?”

Sophie laughed then, a sound he hadn’t heard since the time she’d taught him the word ‘ _cunt_ ’ back in the old Mako tank several cycles past and her entire body bounced against his with her laughter.

“Who taught you _that_ word?!” She asked, her voice shrill and so amused that Davix couldn’t even see her grin in the darkness, he could simply hear it in the way she spoke.

“Uh… you did… ? I like it, _asshole_ ,” He retorted which only served to make Sophie chuckle even more as she lightly tapped him on the chest.

“Anyway, yes, there was a cure.”

“Which was…?”

“Love.”

Davix should have seen that one coming and he couldn’t help the dismayed groan that rumbled out of his throat. There were similar children’s stories embedded deep within Palaveni culture, equally sappy and unoriginal as the one Sophie was describing, the answer to the main protagonists’ problems being to find a love interest and to live _happily ever after_ and Sophie didn’t seem all that impressed with his response.

“What? What was that noise for?”

“Of course, it’s _love_. It’s always _love.”_

“So? What’s wrong with that?”

“It’s so… I don’t know the word for it…”

“Cliché?”

Davix shrugged with a lilt of both mandibles at the strange word Sophie had just uttered. “I don’t know what that means, but sure.”

Sophie laughed again, that beautiful musical sound that had her scrunch her eyes up and leave her mouth gaping in that typically human way that it did. It was a shame he couldn’t really see her doing it.

“We’re… uh… going off course a little here, Dav,” she chortled though Davix was quick to interrupt her again.

“What did you just call me?”

“Dav… why? Don’t you like that?”

She seemed offended that he’d questioned her, and he reacted quickly in an attempt to rectify that.

“No, no, it’s just Davix is actually already short for Adavixus so…” He hummed a chuckle before he continued, his voice a little smaller than before, “… I like it.”

“Your full name is Adavixus Fedorian? What a mouthful,” Sophie teased, resting her head in the hollow of his shoulder.

“Yeah, but we don’t talk about that, so you were telling me how this ugly monster king found love?”  

“Prince,” Sophie corrected though not unkindly before she resumed with playing with his long fingers. His hands were so impossibly big compared to hers.

“A young beautiful village woman, Belle. She hated him at first, he was mean and scary but the more time they spent together…” She looked at him then, turning her body so deliberately slowly against his that he could feel the swell of her breasts sweep against his bare chest. “… the more she fell for him.”

There was a quiet that settled between them then as it seemed to dawn on her just how similar this particular story was to theirs. He was the beast prince, big, ugly, mean and scary and she the beautiful young woman thrust unwittingly into a situation who’d taught him how to love again. It was uncanny to say the least and Davix found himself regretting that demoralised groan he’d uttered at her revelation that the answer to this tale was finding love. Was finding love the end to theirs? But the silence didn’t last as Sophie lowered her gaze and finished her story.

“I was always a bit disappointed when he turned back into a human at the end. I liked him better as the beast.” She seemed embarrassed by her final statement but even then Davix was still missing her point. Did she see him as this beast prince as he had saw himself just now? Or was it something else she was trying to tell him?

“So… you look at me like I’m this monster guy then? Is that what you’re saying?” He asked, allowing the humour to carry his voice and it seemed the joke was taken lightly with the way Sophie giggled in his arm and shook her head.

“What I’m saying is that you’re perfect the way you are…” She tilted her head back to look at him in the dark before turning her body and straddling his lap, wrapping her lean legs around his thin waist.

“You have the strongest arms,” she started, her voice soft, soothing as she smoothed her palms over his forearms and over both biceps. “They make me feel safe. And the way you hold yourself, so fluid, regal…”

She cupped his face then, her thumbs stroking the length of each mandible causing him to flex them habitually beneath her touch. He could only just see her face, her eyes twinkling in the gloom.

Spirits, she was gorgeous.

Simply gorgeous.

And she was looking at him, even through the black, like she hadn’t seen him for a thousand years. Like he was the only thing that existed in this world of hers. No one had ever looked at him like that before.

“And you have the most beautiful eyes I’ve ever seen,” she whispered, her breath hot, sweet against the shell of his face.

“I think you’re gorgeous, Dav. Just…” She sighed, an amorous sound that only forced the heat in his core to drop deeper as she gently leaned in, her lips ghosting over the hard ridges of his mouth. “Just gorgeous.”

He couldn’t resist her anymore as his hands found the smooth curve of her waist and pulled her in crushing his mouth against hers, and they shared yet another one of those delicious wet kisses while he sang in tune with her as she moaned against his mouth.

Davix had been lied to before, about how he made another feel just so they could get their own way. Hence the reason he stopped attending the gatherings all those years ago. He was well known within all of the wrong circles for all of the wrong reasons and distancing himself from that had been more than just difficult. But he knew Sophie wasn’t lying, there was just something inside himself, coupled with the way she shuddered euphorically when he touched her, and the way he’d made her come without having to enter her at all, that told him that she truly believed the things she was telling him.

Davix had never before felt so treasured, so wanted, _beautiful_ , deep within the eyes of another.

By the spirits, he wished he could keep her.

Maybe he could.

Their kiss, the slipping of hot tongues over the other, was soft, slow, sensual. The only sound in the room being their breaths and the soft lap of Sophie’s lips against his mouth as she touched his throat so delicately with her small fingers.

She set his skin on fire in the absolute best way.  

He rolled her onto her back, pressing her small, hot body into the sheets beneath, adamant that he wanted to get to know her better, to kiss, lick and touch every fine detail. He wanted to know, wanted to see and wanted to feel everything she had. Everything.

He heard her sigh his name, a soft passing of breath hot against his face that smelled sweet and intoxicating as he gently broke their kiss only to return for another taste.

How was she so perfect?

So _fucking_ perfect?

He shifted downwards, nuzzling at her neck and allowing his tongue to trail lightly over her flushed skin. He could smell her arousal already, that heady, spicy aroma that made him so damn hungry for her, to be inside her, to _mate_ with her. He’d desired others before, felt that distinctive pull towards a potential mate but never this strongly, never so much that he simply couldn’t resist.

She arched into him again with a pleasured groan, her fingers running over the dipped ridges of his fringe, begging him for more than he was willing to give at that moment in time. It wouldn’t do for this moment to be rushed, he wanted to savour their time together, savour her, taste every inch of her, to devour her essence, make her his.

He trailed lower nipping at her tender flesh as he went until he reached the valley of her pert breasts. He lingered there, suddenly entranced by her scent and the sound of her heavy breathing. But the spell she had put him under didn’t shake the notion that he wasn’t sure where he should be touching her. She seemed to know most of his erogenous zones though he was quite certain a lot of that was guess work on her part.

Time to change things up a bit.

“Tell me where you want me to touch you,” He purred amorously, his hands squeezing her waist tentatively. Sophie giggled at him, a filthy, sexy sound and looked down at him as he peered up at her from between her breasts.

She sat up eventually, her head lolled to the side and resting on a hunched shoulder as she did so which forced him to lift his body from hers.

“It’s no fun if I have to tell you everything,” she teased, running her small soft hands up his forearms as he gently pulled her towards him and forced her to straddle his lap. It was getting more and more difficult to keep himself locked behind his plates, his cock throbbed painfully deep in his sheath, begging to be back inside that sweet warm paradise between Sophie’s legs.

He trilled amusedly at her comment, their faces so close once more but neither really wanting to give in to the other for yet another kiss, but still she was close. The sweet scent of her breath mingling with the spicy aroma of her arousal was quite possibly Davix’s favourite thing about her so far, more than her tentative touches, more than the fact that she had opened her legs to him, but that she was aroused for him, and all that he was. There was nothing else to compare it to, that feeling of absolute completion wrapped in the arms of a beautiful girl, who wanted you for you and nothing else.

“Are you sure about that?” Davix retorted huskily, hands snaking up towards her shoulders as he lapped his tongue over her throat again. The way her blunt fingers dug into his hide and the way her tipped her head back in response was so damn sexy he felt his dick pulse needily in his groin once more.

She didn’t answer this time, instead she reached behind herself and grasped one of his wrists, pulled it around her body as she leaned back against his other arm and pressed his hand to her breast. Davix watched intently as she squeezed his fingers and enticed him to pinch that hard nub of skin that jutted from the pert mound. She moaned so deep in her throat that had Davix respond in kind, while he brought his other hand from around her back, his palms smoothing across her ribs to pay her other breast as much attention as the first one.

Sophie’s legs squeezed him then, around his thin waist which only forced that white-hot coil tighten in his crotch. He was still fighting to stay behind his plates, but it was a battle Sophie was rapidly winning.

He’d let her win.

He’d let her win every damn time.

“I like it when you touch me there,” she whispered, her breaths laboured with pleasure, her hands now resting on Davix’s crossed knees behind her while she arched her back into his hands as he squeezed and massaged her pert, luscious tits. He bowed his head, his long tongue lolling out of his mouth and he curled the tip around a single nipple, while he trailed his other hand – the one with the missing talon – a little lower.

He felt one of her hands creep around his head back to that soft patch of skin beneath his fringe that he had shown her before in a show that he was on the right track. She moaned and sighed his name as he licked her and his other hand descended between them until he found her centre, so hot, so fucking impossibly wet that he could feel her fluids cooling on his belly as she shifted.

He teased her there, unsure at first at what he was actually touching, and noting her nether parts did not feel much like a turians. Where in his own species the females were often dry to the touch and surrounded by hard rough protective plates, Sophie’s was surrounded by short coarse hair and secreted sexual fluids much like he did and she was so soft, so soft, like the rest of her.

She felt amazing.

Davix felt her hand join his then, again guiding his fingers to where she wanted him to touch her, and it was when he was shown a hard nub nestled between her slick folds that she truly began to come undone.

“There, right there, oh yes, oh, Davix, oh god, oh god!” She gasped and her hips rolled as she desperately attempted to drive herself onto her hand. Hearing his name on her lips was one of the best sounds he’d ever heard. He knew how to fuck, and he was damn good at it, hence why he was so sought out – too ugly to love, but not ugly enough not to sit on; a common joke he grew tired of being the centre of – but hearing Sophie say his name, knowing that she wasn’t fantasising about someone else while he touched her, knowing that it was him that she wanted, that she loved how he touched her was enough to blow his mind.

She was so beautiful, so strong and sexy, and she was his, as he was hers.

He took to watching her as she writhed against him, her head tilted back and still with a single hand on his knee and the other down with his between her legs as he swirled his stubby finger around that hard nub of skin. That was until he pulled back a little, teasing at her sopping entrance and pushed the digit inside of her, relishing how her back snapped rigid, how she cried out in ecstasy, and her walls clenched around him.

A growl escaped him as she gave in to him once more as he fucked her with his hand, pulling his finger out the knuckle before pushing it back inside of her in a slow, sensual motion. No, she didn’t feel like a turian, one couldn’t touch her like a turian, she was softer, more supple, delicate, sensitive but physical like he was. She was better than all the other partners he’d had before, better than Trina by a million light years. She brought out the best in him, could see qualities inside of him that even he didn’t know were there. She was everything he wanted, all he wanted and Davix knew at that moment that he would never look at anyone again like how he looked at her.

He lay her down, continuing his sweet torture against her womanhood as he used a supporting hand to lower her back to the silken sheets of the bed before he pulled his finger from her and wrapped his tongue around the soaked digit, savouring her flavour, her essence, spicy and delicious, before he parted her legs with his palms.

She was panting still, close to orgasm for the third time this evening, but not quite at that pinnacle of euphoria that Davix could continue to bring pleasure to his new mate in a way he had wanted to try since she’d had her lips wrapped around his dick.

He admired her for a little longer, breasts heaving with every breath, her skin aglow, glimmering in what little light could penetrate the black of the room, and her legs parted, her body so tight, wet and ready for him already. Davix dipped lower, three-digit hands wrapping around each thigh as he parted his maw and plunged his long blue tongue into her depths. Her back arched, the muscles in her legs rippling with the sensation of feeling him so deep inside of her.

Her hands clawed at his fringe as he lapped up her fluids, and she cried his name as she rolled her pelvis against his face. She tasted incredible, much like her scent, spicy and heady like an expensive cocktail. He curled the tip of his tongue against her inner walls feeling them fluttering against him as he used each mandible to stroke the inside of her thighs until she clenched around him, her legs snapping straight over his shoulder plates and her body almost left the bed in that gorgeous way she did when she came. She mewled and writhed as he drank her up, he wanted every last drop of her, and he was determined to get them all.

But he couldn’t keep it in for much longer, the tip of his cock beginning to force its way out of his sheath painfully as she collapsed back onto the bed. He could still smell her, all around him, ingrained in his skin, she was so addictive, all consuming and what he got from her was never enough.

It would never _be_ enough.

As he had before, readjusting his legs beneath her he grasped her waist and lined up their openings, thanking the spirits that he’d had enough control about him to stay sheathed throughout the experience. It was always something he’d wanted to try with a mate, but was never close enough to another to do so, to unsheathe directly into his partner. Such a deep, sexual and intimate act was reserved for true lovers, none would ever come close to her, to this pretty human laying before him.

And he did just that, Davix relaxed his muscles and pushed his thick cock deep inside of her, unable to stop the whine deep in his chest as he listened to his mate, his one, his love, amicae, gasp and raise her pelvis to allow him better entrance.

And he filled her so completely as he sat there connected to her so intimately. She sat up then, pulling herself up from the mattress until her hands were back on his knees and she straddled his waist. They sat there for a moment together, joined at the hips, and again it was now that Davix could see her, in the dark, in such startling clarity. That he could see just how gorgeous she was, that he could really appreciate just how perfect she was, how perfect she was for him.

“Run away with me.” The words left his mouth before he’d had the chance to register them, a hushed secret in the dark as Sophie, his darling mate, wrapped her arms around his neck, the walls of her sex fluttering around him.

“Where will we go?” She asked, as she started to dance, her hips rocking against his, her slick, hot centre slipping over his cock before he responded and pushed back inside her sweet paradise. He touched her brow with his, his fingers flexing against the juts of her hips as she rolled them so sweetly, so sensually against him. He was getting close already.

“I don’t care,” he breathed, unable to contain his heavy breaths as he felt himself start to unhinge beneath her, “As long as we’re together, I don’t care.”

“Will you show me the stars?” She was whispering, her hands returning to that one part that drove him wild beneath his fringe. He moaned, deep in his chest, his cock pulsing inside of her as he pulled back and she forced him to sink right back into her hot depths.

“I’ll give them to you.”

“Why?”

“ _Tae amo. Tae amo._ ” the phrase was meaningful, one reserved for the closest of lovers but he realised Sophie would find little meaning in it, and so he rephrased it the way in which human minds could comprehend it. “ _Tae amo_ …” He moved closer, his nose resting against hers. “… because I’m in love with you.”

Their motions slowed as Sophie absorbed what he was saying to her, though this wasn’t the first time he’d confessed his love for her, but it was the first time she’d heard the words and understood them from his mouth. Truth be told he hadn’t wanted to fall this far and he’d fought it for the longest time. Loving her, a human, brought so many complications with it that Davix didn’t think he had the mental capacity to deal with them when this whole mess was finally resolved.

But it was too late to think about all of that, it had happened, was still happening, and they were here in the thick of it all, entwined within one another to the point that his chest hurt at the thought of letting her go. Sophie didn’t agree to run away with him that night, but he was sure with the tightening of her arms around his neck, her legs around his waist and himself buried so deep inside of her that she was at least considering it.

“We’re meant to be together,” he soothed, spotting that lone tear sparkling on her cheek and capturing it with the hook of a single finger before he combed his talons through her hair. He hadn’t meant to make her cry and it hurt him to think that he’d upset her somehow by carelessly spilling his thoughts. But she responded before he had the chance to take any of it back.

“I know we are.” Her voice cracked as she spoke, but there was a smile lingering in her tone, which confirmed her tears were not ones of sadness. “If it’s meant to be, it’ll be, Davix.”

She touched him then, unhooking an arm from around his neck and smoothing the flat of her palm against the side of his face. He lifted his own, wrapping his fingers around hers and pressed her hand against him.

“Know that I love you too, more than I’ve loved anyone.”

He looked at her then, having heard the words from her, he felt his heart swell as she motioned towards him and rested her brow against his.

“I was made for you, remember?”

* * *

He made love to her for the remainder of the evening, slow, sensual and singing her praises throughout; telling her how much he loved her, loved fucking her, mating with her, being one with her and she had cooed and encouraged him until they both eventually succumbed to sleep.

It was the first time Davix could truly recall being at peace.

But peace never lasted for ever.

A calm before the storm.

He was woken by a loud bang that came from the sitting room; the main door opening, which caused Davix to leave the bed where his mate was resting and exit the bedroom sharply. There was a shadowy figure stood ominously in the doorway, a silhouette against the artificial lights flooding the outside. It took a few seconds for Davix to realise that it was Preshura stood there, her yellow carapace glinting in the night time gloom.

Had she really come to have another go at him? Given her stance, rigid, alert, it seemed highly unlikely.

“Presh? What’re you doing?” He asked, a little annoyed that she’s woken him, but a little sceptical as to why she felt the need to do that.

“You’ve been summoned.” There was something wrong with the way she spoke; robotic and stuff and she was being careful to keep her harmonics low as though she was holding something back.

“Summoned…?” Davix shrugged with a lilt of his mandibles, not that she could see it. “Summoned by who?”

There was a quiver to Preshura’s next breath that concerned him. He knew this girl, and he knew her well, well enough to know that something was terribly wrong and she was attempting to keep herself in check. The problem with Preshura was she wasn’t very skilled at keeping her emotions to herself.

And she was a terrible liar.

He stepped towards her, cautiously. “Presh? Is everything alright? Has something happened?”

Noting his forward step, Preshura stood rigid once more, asserting a dominance she’d never truly had.

“Kabalim Laruam will see you now, Commander. You and the human. I suggest that you get your things together and be outside soon. We mustn’t keep him waiting.”

Again, her voice was strange to hear, and Davix couldn’t help the concern flood his mind. There was something going on, something a lot more than simply being ‘summoned’ by the Kabalim. It hadn’t escaped Davix’s knowledge that the man was a complete lunatic, corrupted by some artefact deep in the mine of this strange alien dwelling, but something else was afoot. Why would he want to see him _and_ Sophie?

Quickly he turned back towards the bedroom with the intention of waking Sophie but wrapped in one of the silken sheets from the bed she stood there against the doorframe.

Neither of them said anything, a mutual understanding that they needed to move and pretty quickly was passed between them before Sophie, his pure, beautiful mate, disappeared back into the room. The night previous was one of the best of his life, but in that one fleeting moment it was all but forgotten, archived to allow this new event to take priority.

Davix had no idea what he was expecting when he eventually got to meet Kabalim Laruam, but he had a feeling that his nightmare was only just beginning.

* * *

Something was wrong, terribly wrong and that was saying something considering the predicament she’d been in since the evening previous. But there was something stirring in her waters that told her she was being led into a firetrap.

Surrounded by turians, once more, she was uneasy, and even more so to discover that Torque, the huge green golem of a man marching in front of the troop was acting strangely. She didn’t know him well enough to determine whether or not this was true by herself but the fact that Davix continued to ask questions only to be ignored was enough evidence that something wasn’t quite as it should be.

And after hers and Davix’s rather active evening everything ached, her joints moved like they were made of stone. No longer a satisfying reminder of how damn good Davix really was in bed, but a hinderance to perform as she should, an irritation she could very well do without right now. Not that she regretted any of it, she would relive this hell all over again if it meant having Davix in her bed, but she really wished Preshura would stop staring at her as she made her frail attempts not to limp, which was, of course, was easier said than done.

The pair of them were led towards what looked like an elevator, the shaft entrance to the mine, and both she and Davix were ordered by the troop to stand in the lift and await its descent into the depths beneath the planets crust. Palladium was what they primarily mined here at Shanxi, though Sophie was aware there were pockets of element zero here too, she hoped there was none here to cause issues.

The elevator ride was made in silence save the for the gears creaking in the machine itself and this did nothing to quell that disgusting ball of dread swilling around in Sophie’s guts. She knew Davix would have to speak with this leader of theirs at some point but why had he summoned both of them down into the mine?

What was she about to walk into?

Torque had promised to release her if she complied; was it all a lie?

A quick look at Davix confirmed that he was just as apprehensive about this whole situation as she was, as he stood there stiff as a board and his brow lowered heavily over his eyes. He didn’t connect his gaze with Sophie’s, presumably he was conjuring up whatever tactic he was going to use on this man to release his comrades from the Kabalim’s unjust grip.

Somehow, Sophie doubted it would even be that easy.

But still she willed him to look at her, willed him to tell her in someway that everything was going to be alright, that he had her back. But Davix simply stood there boring holes in the door of the elevator with his acidic gaze.

The girls and Torque’s demeanour mimicked that of Davix, stoic and focused on whatever was to come, though it was more than clear by the way the two large males occasionally whistled to one another through their subharmonics that there was friction between them.

The lift eventually rumbled to halt, the troop, demeanours low, headed out of the doors as soon as they slid open and beckoned the others harshly to follow.

There were loads of them, turians, soldiers, all lined up against the rock face on the far side of the brightly lit mine. An open expanse that looked more like a quarry than the typical open shaft mines Sophie was accustomed to. It wasn’t until now that she realised the facility above the mine had been completely abandoned. Everyone who occupied the dwelling was here with them.

It wasn’t just Davix and Sophie who had been summoned, the entire army had.

The quarry was vast, a circular expanse that had been dug out over time with tunnels leading in other directions that lined the original quarry. But that wasn’t what caught her eye and instantly she was thrown back to that horrific night she and Davix were attacked by those horrible turian husks – that defining night when they realised they were no longer enemies - but these ones she saw here crowded around a construct in the centre of the quarry weren’t just turian. There were humans too, men, women and their children; grey, hollow, dead.

They all stood around a construct so tall and radiating the light in the mine, in the centre of the quarry, no doubt this monolith Torque and his girls spoke of and they swayed as though trapped in some invisible current. There were hundreds of them, and that sickening ball of dread already tying her guts in knots tightened that little bit more at the sight of them.

Husks powered by an unnatural energy, they were little more than zombies.

_Won’t let them take me. Cannot be stopped._

The monolith had corrupted them all, taken away their consciousness and turned them… into what, Sophie didn’t even know, either way they were no longer the thing they once were. Turians and humans all stood together as one mass and worshiped the construct, all naked, their frail bodies spliced by strange circuitry running through their bodies, gawking open mouthed into that blinding light.

_Won’t let them take me. Cannot be stopped._

She was reminded then of Dowell, a man she hadn’t ghosted her mind over since the day she’d discovered him dead in his office. How the corruption had started in his mouth and bled into his eye before he’d taken that pistol and blew his brains out. This was the artefact he’d wanted, the one Davix spoke of in the turian tank only hours ago. This was why they’d kept Davix, The Ghost, locked in a room away from his team. Dowell thought he knew something that he clearly didn’t.

_Won’t let them take me. Cannot be stopped._

This, thing, this beautiful pillar of light, that called out to her, swept over her mind in its strange alien tongue, this thing was what Dowell wanted. For what purpose would forever remain unknown now that he was dead, but the fact that he’d taken his own life spoke volumes.

He knew what was happening to him even in his hour of madness. Sophie realised then that she’d seen it in his eyes the night he’d killed that poor wretched boy with his gorgeous cobalt eyes.

_Won’t let them take me. Cannot be stopped._

The strange letter she’d found on his desk. It had something to do with this monolith, but the question remained of how Dowell had come into contact with the thing in the first place, had he been here? Had this thing been moved from another place? She was asking silent questions she would never have the pleasure of gaining answers to.

But the sheer sight of these poor souls, now servants to the light pulsing out of the construct in the centre of the room and being able to sense the tangible fear from everyone else surrounding her, it was any wonder they never dared to oppose their leader if this was what they faced to become if they tried.

The thought did little, however, to quell her anger.

“That’s how you took over the facility…” Sophie uttered, her breath catching in her throat as the realisation making her eyes burn. She turned to Torque then, the tears in her eyes betraying her otherwise shocked expression as he turned away shamefully.

“You allowed the humans here to be _corrupted by that thing_!” her voice quickly morphed into a scream and she was sobbing in nothing but sheer fury at the facts that were facing her. Neither Torque nor the girls answered her, but only confirmed what she was saying with their silence and reluctance to look at her.

“We were under orders…” was all he said, his voice was quiet, much quieter than she had ever heard it and she laughed in his face. She laughed at how pathetic it sounded, how utterly ridiculous this who situation was.

“Really? Is that really good enough? You let the corruption happen and then you just moved right on in! You knew! You knew this was here, you knew what it was doing, and you let it happen! You let it happen to your own! Just bury it in the mine, _that’ll solve the problem!”_ She knew she was screaming, her throat tearing against her cries of fury and frustration at the people who here who referred to her as the monster.

How dare they?

How _fucking_ dare they?

**_“You call it corruption, we know it as perfection.”_ **

Sophie could less hear the voice than feel it in her mind, which caused her entire body to pause at the sensation. She didn’t recognise the voice, but it sounded familiar all the same, even so what took her more by surprise was that only she and Davix reacted to it. All the other turians in the vicinity – and there had to be at least forty of them possibly more all pressed up against the rock face, bowed heads and shifting against one another, they were scared, so scared – didn’t react to the voice at all. Sophie thought at first that perhaps they simply hadn’t heard it, but something in her gut told her that they were simply desensitised to the sensation of hearing voices in their own heads.

And then she saw him, this Kabalim of theirs, after the masses of hollow creatures had parted to reveal him, a creature like nothing else she had ever seen seated before the construct embedded in the rock so bright she couldn’t look directly at it.

 “Who’s we?” she dared to call, and it was then he stood, the robes surrounding him falling away to expose his alien body, withered and frail, dead, seemingly decomposing as bits of himself flaked and fell to the stone beneath, and replaced by implants of metal and cables that writhed around him like a living thing. Long hinged bars jutted from his back, possibly inserted somehow into his spine and they moved so fluidly. He reminded her of a cockroach, though admittedly not like any she had ever seen in her life.

He had been turian once, though his mandibles were seemingly bolted into place in a permanent grotesque grin. There were no words to describe him, though Sophie found it difficult to look at him at all when she head his voice in her head again.

**_“All of us, for we are many. The day draws near for when the titans return, and we require a sacrifice. Bring it to me.”_ **

* * *

It was no wonder Torque had been silent on his way down here, no wonder at all that no one wanted to speak about this unholy thing piercing the centre of the mine.

It was like nothing he’d ever seen before and Davix couldn’t tear his eyes away from it; this thing, this…

_Monolith._

It called to him in broken whispers in a language long dead to any ears, enticed him close the distance and had he been a weaker man he would have stepped towards it with little hesitation. It was terror that kept him glued to the spot, terror of what the thing would do to him if he so much as touched it, terror of how he had gotten himself into this damned mess in the first place.

The sight of the husk creatures surrounding it didn’t irk him as much as the monolith itself did, even Sophie’s raised voice at his friend couldn’t drag his gaze away from it. So alien, deadly… so _beautiful_.

It was the Kabalim who pulled his attentions back into reality, the corrupted old man who so obviously had a severe case of plate-rot – a condition usually brought on by severe exposure and malnutrition – the plates all but sloughing away from his face in long paper-thin strips. No wonder no one wanted to go near him. Plate-rot was highly infectious and out here there was no treatment, the rot would disfigure him for life at best, the worst-case scenario being an infection in the blood or even death, but given how his entire body was somehow being replaced by machinery it seemed he was probably a little too far gone for help.

It seemed like he didn’t even want help.

“Sacrifice?” Davix called then, taking a single step closer to Laruam who now stood on legs that were no longer his own, withered things supported by harsh stiff struts. Davix wondered only briefly if the man had done all this to himself to keep him moving, but there was something deep inside himself that was telling him otherwise.

 _ **“I know that voice…”**_ Laruam said, his voice not supported by subharmonics which made his state of mind difficult to determine. **_“Ah… yes, we are in the presence of royalty, are we not? I know a Fedorian when I hear one.”_**

It wasn’t until he was talking about ‘hearing’ him as opposed to simply seeing – because let’s face it, Davix is pretty difficult to miss in a crowd – that he realised then that the Kabalim was now blind. The one eye he had left was whiter than ash, rolled into the back of his head and the other a collection of what Davix could understand were tubes pushed into his skull.

With all the modifications he was displaying here it was any wonder he wasn’t already dead.

“Don’t mistake me, Kabalim. I am not the Primarch, I’m his brother, Adavixus,” Davix answered, though he didn’t particularly want to stay on that subject for long. “I asked you about a sacrifice. What do you mean?”

 _ **“Ah yes, the freak.”**_ It was unclear if the comment was a taunt or a mere observation, either way Davix didn’t take kindly to it though he displayed his dissatisfaction with little more than a huff. He wasn’t here to play petty games, and the Kabalim, crazy or not, should know better.

The old man swayed on the spot, surrounded by his hollow minions, the hundred of innocent people he’d turned into these creatures to revive a dead religion. How was all this corruption, all of this death worth that? The turian race had survived countless centuries without it, why now? Why was it so important to them now? It didn’t make sense.

_**“Your father was a good man, a great man, Adavixus. Dominus would have stood proud to see you bask in the presence of perfection. My sacrifice, bring it to me.”** _

Davix was beginning to lose his patience with the entire situation, obviously he was going to get very little to no sense out of the old man. He had been brought here to talk about releasing the squad from his control, but the guy had clearly lost his mind in all its entirety. He turned then to Torque who lifted his gaze solemnly and it was then that he realised something else was happening here.

There was little doubt that something supernatural was going down here, and he needed to somehow get the Cabal away from the mine before anyone else succumbed to the monolith but there was something else stirring, and Davix’s intuition was hardly ever wrong. Torque was keeping something from him.

“What’s he talking about? What sacrifice?” Davix asked his old friend whose expression didn’t change, but it wasn’t until he noticed two of the husks approaching from behind his old friend that Torque even spoke.

“I’m sorry my friend…” he started, his voice low yet his harmonics anything but sympathetic as Davix realised then that he and Sophie had been separated by the troop. Torque and the girls stood between he and her and the strange husk creature was heading her way. “…It’s the only way.”

It was Sophie Laruam wanted.

She was this sacrifice. They were going to take her and turn her into one of those monsters.

They’d been lured here as part of some elaborate trap by people he thought he trusted, by people he thought were friends, allies and the horror that bubbled in his gut made him feel sick to his stomach.

“No, no Torque, don’t! Don’t do this, please! NO!”

Davix bolted towards her, towards his mate, attempted to shove past Torque to get to her but he was much bigger and much stronger, and biotic to boot, and he wrapped his huge green hand around Davix’s head and powered him in the floor at his feet.

“Stay down boy! Don’t make this worse than it needs to be,” Torque snarled at him, his voice, nasty and venomous only just audible over Sophie’s cries of fear as the creature snatched her away from the group. And they all stood and watched her go. Davix struggled against Torque who was now practically sitting on him, the two girls beside him attempting to seal him in place with their biotics.  

He was pinned to the floor, the rock beneath cracking with the pressure the others applied to him with their biotic powers. He wasn’t strong enough to simply break free as he feebly reached for Sophie as she was being dragged away.

Laruam’s latest sacrifice.

“Not her! Please, please, _not her_!”

He’d been betrayed by his own as they attempted to prevent him the use of his body, but he was stronger than the Cabal gave him credit for and he fought against it, straining every muscle he had to gain purchase. He could hear Torque crying to the others to apply more force, could hear their feet skidding on the ground as Davix screamed and shook beneath the pressure.

“Laruam! Stop, not her! Take me, _take me_!”

The ground shifted under his weight, unaware of how much strain he was outing against the three keeping him on the floor, unaware of the sheer amount of brute strength he’d harboured deep in his bones, unaware that he was screaming, unaware that his neck wound was splitting under the pressure and the blood was pooling beneath his armour and spilling out of his mouth.

_“Take me instead!”_

Time seemed to slow then, as he watched, helpless beneath the ice-cold grip of those he’d once believed were his friends, those he thought he could trust. Davix’s world was ending, crumbling around his shoulders as he watched his mate struggle for her life against the monster dragging her to her death. Her only defence to drop to her knees in a frail attempt to resist and pound at the husk’s arm in the hopes that he’d release her. Laruam awaiting her with open hands as though welcoming a guest into his home.

They’d been lured it here, it was a trap and this was how their stories ended.

**_“Take me!”_ **

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so so much for reading, and thank you so so much to Wafflesrock for her helpful inputs in particular scenes I was struggling with. 
> 
> I appreciate all kudos and feedback and I would love to know what you thought. Thanks again! <33


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